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Tey ietritt if Vptetrirly iitit ee Ha He neha nee ere arith parr ts ae, eetenenece sae ol mitite Sten =i: sestrl <= Sregeesies ~~. Ss oat ~t bebobsbed sts! epeeh ~~ —— asses ebebpireke! =F epost = : aes sats <—~ — bprpte ty! sh so = <= ~J~< ~~ i pth ht oh ek ee Se antes eeneteta! 35 “e. Se se aete te — poets ae = pee te ty —s = bap opr iy ee) a os SSS aeteet: ~S = te SS —_ —s at ao td 8 a dd at tp ee : =) > my SEpteksishs = Sr % — = > = —S = = 2s te etnbpi-shsbroptere! St +4 ea ee ee —s Deophetetete” =<. Rs ry en nme Yo ee ae ee < Sosa Fie, 8—Sketch map showing the route of the Yale-Peruvian Expedition of 1911 down the Urubamba Valley, together with the area of the main map and the changes in the delineation of the bend of the Urubamba resulting from the surveys of the Expedition. Based on the “Mapa que comprende las ultimas exploraciones y estudios verificados desde 1900 hasta 1906,” 1:1,000,000, Bol. Soc. Geogr. Lima, Vol. 25, No. 3, 1909. For details of the trail from Rosalina to Pongo de Mainique see “ Plano de las Secciones y Afluentes del Rio Urubamba: 1902-1904, scale 1:150,000 by Luis M. Robledo in Bol. Soc. Geogr. Lima, Vol. 25, No. 4, 1909. Only the lower slopes of the long mountain spurs can be seen from the river; hence only in a few places could observations be made on the topography of distant ranges. Paced distances of a half mile at irregular intervals were used for the estimation of longer distances. Direc- tions were taken by compass corrected for magnetic deviation as determined on the seventy-third meridian (See Appendix A). The position of Rosalina on Robledo’s map was taken as a base. 10 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU ous than Major Powell’s famous descent of the Grand Canyon in 1867—an obvious exaggeration. He lost his canoe in a treacher- ous rapid, was deserted by his Indian guides, and only after a painful march through an all but impassable jungle was he finally able to escape on an abandoned raft. Less than a dozen have ventured down since Major Kerbey’s day. A Peruvian mining engineer descended the river a few years ago, and four Italian traders a year later floated down in rafts and canoes, losing al- most all of their cargo. For nearly two months they were marooned upon a sand-bar waiting for the river to subside. At last they succeeded in reaching Mulanquiato, an Indian settlement and plantation owned by Pereira, near the entrance to the last canyon. Their attempted passage of the worst stretch of rapids resulted in the loss of all their rubber cargo, the work of a year. Among the half dozen others who have made the journey—Indians and slave traders from down-river rubber posts—there is no rec- ord of a single descent without the loss of at least one canoe. To reach the head of canoe navigation we made a two weeks’ muleback journey north of Cuzco through the steep-walled granite Canyon of Torontoy, and to the sugar and cacao plantations of the middle Urubamba, or Santa Ana Valley, where we outfitted. At Kcharati, thirty miles farther on, where the heat becomes more in- tense and the first patches of real tropical forest begin, we were obliged to exchange our beasts for ten fresh animals accustomed to forest work and its privations. Three days later we pitched our tent on the river bank at Rosalina, the last outpost of the valley set- tlements. As we dropped down the steep mountain slope before striking the river flood plain, we passed two half-naked Machi- ganga Indians perched on the limbs of a tree beside the trail, our first sight of members of a tribe whose territory we had now en- tered. Later in the day they crossed the river in a dugout, landed on the sand-bar above us, and gathered brush for the nightly fire, around which they lie wrapped in a single shirt woven from the fiber of the wild cotton. - Rosalina is hardly more than a name on the map and a camp site on the river bank. Some distance back from the left bank of ‘GhT PU FFI ‘Sol os[e orvduioy ‘neg Udat]{NOs Jo sopuy 9} Jo woaysds ySoututoysva ayy ‘eduuedvoitA BAO[[IpLOH oY} JO SIX¥ O}IULAS oY} SoSsodo TOATY vQuivgniy oy} ‘Sprdvi Jo OUI, Snonulyuod 4ysoul[B 4vyy etoy St 4z ‘souvtd qutof Suojze Ajorrzue ysourlpe poedojeaop uv Aq UsxOAG SI LAT oy, ‘doop yoo OQO'p Avmozvs pipusds v SI [em oyg, “AoT[eA vquivqnap ‘Aojuotoy, yo uodurD oz1ueIs UL Sapuy oY} Jo osULY UOT OY} SossotD BqUIEqnIQ OY} d10TTA ‘YI]O JOOJ-puvsnoyj-omy BV JO F[VY AMO, OY -—OL “DI ‘onbiuivyy op osuog oY} 0} souvayuo 1eddn o4,—é6 ‘pI Hrq. 12: Fie. 11—A temporary shelter-hut on a sand-bar near the great bend of the Uru- bamba (see map, Fig. 8). The Machiganga Indians use these cane shelters during the fishing season, when the river is low. Fig. 12—Thirty-foot canoe in a rapid above Pongo de Mainique. THE RAPIDS AND CANYONS OF THE URUBAMBA 11 the river is a sugar plantation, whose owner lives in the cooler mountains, a day’s journey away; on the right bank is a small clearing planted to sugar cane and yueca, and on the edge of it is a reed hut sheltering three inhabitants, the total population of Rosalina. The owner asked our destination, and to our reply that we should start in a few days for Pongo de Mainique he offered two serious objections. No one thought of arranging so difficult a journey in less than a month, for canoe and Indians were diffi- cult to find, and the river trip was dangerous. Clearly, to start without the loss of precious time would require unusual exertion. We immediately despatched an Indian messenger to the owner of the small hacienda across the river while one of our peons car- ried a second note to a priest of great influence among the forest Indians, Padre Mendoza, then at his other home in the distant mountains. The answer of Senor Morales was his appearance in person to offer the hospitality of his home and to assist us in securing canoe and oarsmen. To our note the Padre, from his hill-top, sent a polite answer and the offer of his large canoe if we would but guarantee its return. His temporary illness prevented a visit to which we had looked forward with great interest. The morning after our arrival I started out on foot in company with our arriero in search of the Machigangas, who fish and hunt along the river bank during the dry season and re- tire to their hill camps when the heavy rains begin. We soon left the well-beaten trail and, following a faint woodland path, came to the river bank about a half day’s journey below Rosalina. There we found a canoe hidden in an overhanging arch of vines, and crossing the river met an Indian family who gave us further directions. Their vague signs were but dimly understood and we soon found ourselves in the midst of a carrizo (reed) swamp filled with tall bamboo and cane and crossed by a network of inter- lacing streams. We followed a faint path only to find ourselves climbing the adjacent mountain slopes away from our destination. Once again in the swamp we had literally to cut our way through the thick cane, wade the numberless brooks, and follow wild ani- 12 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU mal trails until, late in the day, famished and thirsty, we came upon a little clearing on a sand-bar, the hut of La Sama, who knew the Machigangas and their villages. After our long day’s work we had fish and yuea, and water to which had been added a little raw cane sugar. Late at night La Sama returned from a trip to the Indian villages down river. He brought with him a half-dozen Machiganga Indians, boys and men, and around the camp fire that night gave us a dramatic ac- count of his former trip down river. At one point he leaped to his feet, and with an imaginary pole shifted the canoe in a swift rapid, turned it aside from imminent wreck, and shouting at the top of his voice over the roar of the water finally succeeded in evading what he had made seem certain death in a whirlpool. We kept a fire going all night long for we slept upon the ground with- out a covering, and, strange as it may appear, the cold seemed in- tense, though the minimum thermometer registered 59° F. The next morning the whole party of ten sunned themselves for nearly an hour until the flies and heat once more drove them to shelter. Returning to camp next day by a different route was an experi- ence of great interest, because of the light it threw on hidden trails known only to the Indian and his friends. Slave raiders in former years devastated the native villages and forced the Indian to con- ceal his special trails of refuge. At one point we traversed a cliff seventy-five feet above the river, walking on a narrow ledge no wider than a man’s foot. At another point the dim trail ap- parently disappeared, but when we had climbed hand over hand up the face of the cliff, by hanging vines and tree roots, we came upon it again. Crossing the river in the canoe we had used the day before, we shortened the return by wading the swift Chi- rumbia waist-deep, and by crawling along a cliff face for nearly an eighth of a mile. At the steepest point the river had so under- cut the face that there was no trail at all, and we swung fully fif- teen feet from one ledge to another, on a hanging vine high above the river. After two days’ delay we left Rosalina late in the afternoon of August 7. My party included several Machiganga Indians, La THE RAPIDS AND CANYONS OF THE URUBAMBA 13 Sama, and Dr. W. G. Erving, surgeon of the expedition. Mr. P. B. Lanius, Moscoso (the arriero), and two peons were to take the pack train as far as possible toward the rubber station at Pongo de Mainique where preparations were to be made for our arrival. At the first rapid we learned the method of our Indian boatmen. It was to run the heavy boat head on into shallow water at one side of a rapid and in this way ‘‘brake’’ it down stream. Heavily loaded with six men, 200 pounds of baggage, a dog, and supplies of yuca and sugar cane our twenty-five foot dugout canoe was as rigid as a steamer, and we dropped safely down rapid after rapid until long after dark, and by the light of a glorious tropical moon we beached our craft in front of La Sama’s hut at the edge of the cane swamp. Here for five days we endured a most exasperating delay. La Sama had promised Indian boatmen and now said none had yet been secured. Hach day Indians were about to arrive, but by nightfall the promise was broken only to be repeated the follow- ing morning. To save our food supply—we had taken but six days’ provisions—we ate yuca soup and fish and some parched corn, adding to this only a little from our limited stores. At last we could wait no longer, even if the map had to be sacrificed to the work of navigating the canoe. Our determination to leave stirred La Sama to final action. He secured an assistant named Wilson and embarked with us, planning to get Indians farther down river or make the journey himself. On August 12, at 4.30 P. M., we entered upon the second stage of the journey. As we shot down the first long rapid and rounded a wooded bend the view down river opened up and gave us our first clear notion of the region we had set out to explore. From mountain summits in the clouds long trailing spurs descend to the river bank. In general the slopes are smooth-contoured and for- est-clad from summit to base; only in a few places do high cliffs diversify the scenery. The river vista everywhere includes a rapid and small patches of playa or flood plain on the inside of the river curves. Although a true canyon hems in the river at two celebrated passes farther down, the upper part of the river 14 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU flows in a somewhat open valley of moderate relief, with here and there a sentinel-like peak next the river. A light shower fell at sunset, a typical late-afternoon down- pour so characteristic of the tropics. We landed at a small en- campment of Machigangas, built a fire against the scarred trunk of a big palm, and made up our beds in the open, covering them with our rubber ponchos. Our Indian neighbors gave us yuca and corn, but their neighborliness went no further, for when our boat- men attempted to sleep under their roofs they drove them out and fastened as securely as possible the shaky door of their hut. All our efforts to obtain Indians, both here and elsewhere, proved fruitless. One excuse after another was overcome; they plainly coveted the trinkets, knives, machetes, muskets, and am- munition that we offered them; and they appeared to be friendly enough. Only after repeated assurances of our friendship could we learn the real reason for their refusal. Some of them were escaped rubber pickers that had been captured by white raiders several years before, and for them a return to the rubber country meant enslavement, heavy floggings, and separation from their numerous wives. The hardships they had endured, their final escape, the cruelty of the rubber men, and the difficult passage of the rapids below were a set of circumstances that nothing in our list of gifts could overcome. My first request a week before had so sharpened their memory that one of them related the story of his wrongs, a recital intensely dramatic to the whole circle of his listeners, including myself. Though I did not understand the de- tails of his story, his tones and gesticulations were so effective that they held me as well as his kinsmen of the woods spellbound for over an hour. It is appalling to what extent this great region has been de- populated by the slave raiders and those arch enemies of the savage, smallpox and malaria. At Rosalina, over sixty Indians died of malaria in one year; and only twenty years ago seventy of them, the entire population of the Pongo, were swept away by smallpox. For a week we passed former camps near small aban- doned clearings, once the home of little groups of Machigangas. THE RAPIDS AND CANYONS OF THE URUBAMBA § 15 Even the summer shelter huts on the sand-bars, where the Indians formerly gathered from their hill homes to fish, are now almost entirely abandoned. Though our men carefully reconnoitered each one for fear of ambush, the precaution was needless. Below the _Coribeni the Urubamba is a great silent valley. It is fitted by Nature to support numerous villages, but its vast solitudes are unbroken except at night, when a few families that live in the hills slip down to the river to gather yuca and cane. By noon of the second day’s journey we reached the head of the great rapid at the mouth of the Sirialo. We had already run the long Coribeni rapid, visited the Indian huts at the junction of the big Coribeni tributary, exchanged our canoe for a larger and steadier one, and were now to run one of the ugliest rapids of the upper river. The rapid is formed by the gravel masses that the Sirialo brings down from the distant Cordillera Vileapampa. They trail along for at least a half-mile, split the river into two main currents and nearly choke the mouth of the tributary. For almost a mile above this great barrier the main river is ponded and almost as quiet as a lake. We let our craft down this rapid by ropes, and in the last dif- ficult passage were so roughly handled by our almost unmanagea- ble canoe as to suffer from several bad accidents. All of the party were injured in one way or another, while I suffered a fracture sprain of the left foot that made painful work of the rest of the river trip. At two points below Rosalina the Urubamba is shut in by steep mountain slopes and vertical cliffs. Canoe navigation below the Sirialo and Coribeni rapids is no more hazardous than on the rapids of our northern rivers, except at the two ‘‘pongos’’ or nar- row passages. The first occurs at the sharpest point of the abrupt curve shown on the map; the second is the celebrated Pongo de Mainique. In these narrow passages in time of high water there is no landing for long stretches. The bow paddler stands well forward and tries for depth and current; the stern paddler keeps the canoe steady in its course. When paddlers are in agreement even a heavy canoe can be directed into the most favorable chan- 16 , THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU nels. Our canoemen were always in disagreement, however, and as often as not we shot down rapids at a speed of twenty miles an hour, broadside on, with an occasional bump on projecting rocks or boulders whose warning ordinary boatmen would not let go unheeded. The scenery at the great bend is unusually beautiful. The tropical forest crowds the river bank, great cliffs rise sheer from the water’s edge, their faces overhung with a trailing drapery of vines, and in the longer river vistas one may sometimes see the distant heights of the Cordillera Vileapampa. We shot the long succession of rapids in the first canyon without mishap, and at night pitched our tent on the edge of the river near the mouth of the Manugali. From the sharp peak opposite our camp we saw for the first time the phenomenon of cloud-banners. A light breeze was blow- ing from the western mountains and its vapor was condensed into clouds that floated down the wind and dissolved, while they were constantly forming afresh at the summit. In the night a thunder- storm arose and swept with a roar through the vast forest above us. The solid canopy of the tropical forest fairly resounded with the impact of the heavy raindrops. The next morning all the brooks from the farther side of the river were in flood and the river discolored. When we broke camp the last mist wraiths of the storm were still trailing through the tree-tops and wrapped about the peak opposite our camp, only parting now and then to give us delightful glimpses of a forest-clad summit riding high above the clouds. The alternation of deeps and shallows at this point in the river and the well-developed canyon meanders are among the most cele- brated of their kind in the world. Though shut in by high cliffs and bordered by mountains the river exhibits a succession of curves so regular that one might almost imagine the country a plain from the pattern of the meanders. The succession of smooth curves for a long distance across existing mountains points to a time when a lowland plain with moderate slopes drained by strongly meandering rivers was developed here. Uplift afforded THE RAPIDS AND CANYONS OF THE URUBAMBA ily) a chance for renewed down-cutting on the part of all the streams, and the incision of the meanders. The present meanders are, of course, not the identical ones that were formed on the low- land plain; they are rather their descendants. Though they still retain their strongly curved quality, and in places have almost cut through the narrow spurs between meander loops, they are not smooth like the meanders of the Mississippi. Here and there are sharp irregular turns that mar the symmetry of the larger curves. The alternating bands of hard and soft rock have had a large part in making the course more irregular. The meanders have re- sponded to the rock structure. Though regular in their broader features they are irregular and deformed in detail. Deeps and shallows are known in every vigorous river, but it is seldom that they are so prominently developed as in these great canyons. At one point in the upper canyon the river has been broadened into a lake two or three times the average width of the channel and with a scarcely perceptible current; above and below the ‘‘laguna,’’ as the boatmen eall it, are big rapids with beds so shallow that rocks project in many places. In the Pongo de Mainique the river is at one place only fifty feet wide, yet so deep that there is little current. It is on the banks of the quiet stretches that the red forest deer grazes under leafy arcades. Here, too, are the boa-constrictor trails several feet wide and bare like a roadway. At night the great serpents come trailing down to the river’s edge, where the red deer and the wildcat, or so- called ‘‘tiger,’’ are their easy prey. It is in such quiet stretches that one also finds the vast colonies of water skippers. They dance continuously in the sun with an in- cessant motion from right to left and back again. Occasionally one dances about in circles, then suddenly darts through the entire mass, though without striking his equally erratic neighbors. An up-and-down motion still further complicates the effect. It is posi- tively bewildering to look intently at the whirling multitude and try to follow their complicated motions. Every slight breath of wind brings a shock to the organization of the dance. For though they dance only in the sun, their favorite places are the sunny 18 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU spots in the shade near the bank, as beneath an overhanging tree. When the wind shakes the foliage the mottled pattern of shade and sunlight is confused, the dance slows down, and the dancers be- come bewildered. In a storm they seek shelter in the jungle. The hot, quiet, sunlit days bring out literally millions of these tiny creatures. One of the longest deeps in the whole Urubamba lies just above the Pongo at Mulanquiato. We drifted down with a gentle cur- rent just after sunset. Shrill whistles, like those of a steam launch, sounded from either bank, the strange piercing notes of the lowland cicada, cicada tibicen. Long decorated canoes, bet- ter than any we had yet seen, were drawn up in the quiet coves. Soon we came upon the first settlement. The owner, Sefor Pereira, has gathered about him a group of Machigangas, and by marrying into the tribe has attained a position of great influence among the Indians. Upon our arrival a gun was fired to announce . to his people that strangers had come, upon which the Machi- gangas strolled along in twos and threes from their huts, helped us ashore with the baggage, and prepared the evening meal. Here we sat down with five Italians, who had ventured into the rubber fields with golden ideas as to profits. After having lost the larger part of their merchandise, chiefly cinchona, in the rapids the year before, they had established themselves here with the idea of pick- ing rubber. Without capital, they followed the ways of the itiner- ant rubber picker and had gathered ‘‘caucho,’’ the poorer of the two kinds of rubber. No capital is required; the picker simply cuts down the likeliest trees, gathers the coagulated sap, and floats it down-stream to market. After a year of this life they had grown restless and were venturing on other schemes for the great down-river rubber country. A few weeks later, on returning through the forest, we met their carriers with a few small bundles, the only part of their cargo they had saved from the river. Without a canoe or the means to buy one they had built rafts, which were quickly torn to pieces in the rapids. We, too, should have said ‘‘pobres Italianos’’ if their venture had not been plainly foolish. The rubber terri- *A[uo soovjd Moy @ 4B as¥I[Oy olf} SoyVajoued 4YSITUNS oY} TOF ‘1oyVAM FO [[NF o1¥ S9[0Y eSey} Uosves AIP oY} Ul UeAW “doop Jooy OA} 07 IVY B pus ouo wory st jood youm ‘enbrureyy op osuog pue vurlesoy ueeM}oq JSOLOF UIVI OY} UL [lem opnu oyT—FL “oq ‘ydeis -ojoyd asus B Jo SzLUII] 94 UTYIIM smod0 setoeds Jo satoog ‘(Hl 091) 3020} 00'S UOIQvAeIe ‘onbiureyy op oSuog aAoqe 4S0.10F UIVI OY} UI UOTZEIeS0A [vordo14 Jo uorIsodmoDj—eT ‘oIyT Fia. 15. Fie. 15—Topography and vegetation from the Tocate pass, 7,100 feet (2,164 m.), between Rosalina and Pongo de Mainique. See Fig. 53a. This is in the zone of maximum rainfall. The cumulo-nimbus clouds are typical and change to nimbus in the early afternoon. Fie. 16—The Expedition’s thirty-foot canoe at the mouth of the Timpia below Pongo de Mainique. THE RAPIDS AND CANYONS OF THE URUBAMBA 19 tory is difficult enough for men with capital; for men with- out capital it is impossible. Such men either become affiliated with organized companies or get out of the region when they can. A few, made desperate by risks and losses, cheat and steal their way to rubber. Two years before our trip an Italian had murdered two Frenchmen just below the Pongo and stolen their rubber cargo, whereupon he was shot by Machigangas under the leadership of Domingo, the chief who was with us on a journey from Pongo de Mainique to the mouth of the Timpia. After- ward they brought his skull to the top of a pass along the forest trail and set it up on a cliff at the very edge of Machiganga-land as a warning to others of his kind. At Mulanquiato we secured five Machigangas and a boy inter- preter, and on August 17 made the last and most difficult portion of our journey. We found these Indians much more skilful than our earlier boatmen. Well-trained, alert, powerful, and with ex- cellent team-play, they swept the canoe into this or that thread of the current, and took one after another of the rapids with the greatest confidence. No sooner had we passed the Sintulini rapids, fully a mile long, than we reached the mouth of the Pomareni. This swift tributary comes in almost at right angles to the main river and gives rise to a confusing mass of standing waves and conflicting currents rendered still more difficult by the whirlpool just below the junction. So swift is the circling current of the maélstrom that the water is hollowed out like a great bowl, a really formidable point and one of our most dangerous passages; a little too far to the right and we should be thrown over against the cliff- face; a little too far to the left and we should be caught in the whirlpool. Once in the swift current the canoe became as help- less as a chip. It was turned this way and that, each turn head- ing it apparently straight for destruction. But the Indians had judged their position well, and though we seemed each moment in a worse predicament, we at last skimmed the edge of the whirl- pool and brought our canoe to shore just beyond its rim. A little farther on we came to the narrow gateway of the Pongo, where the entire volume of the river flows between cliffs 20 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU at one point no more than fifty feet apart. Here are concentrated the worst rapids of the lower Urubamba. For nearly fifteen miles the river is an unbroken succession of rapids, and once within its walls the Pongo offers small chance of escape. At some points we were fortunate enough:-to secure a foothold along the edge of the river and to let our canoe down by ropes. At others we were obliged to take chances with the current, though the great depth of water in most of the Pongo rapids makes them really less formidable in some respects than the shallow rapids up stream. The chief danger here lies in the rotary motion of the water at the sharpest bends. The effect at some places is extraordinary. A floating object is carried across stream like a feather and driven at express-train speed against a solid cliff. In trying to avoid one of these cross-currents our canoe became turned midstream, we were thrown this way and that, and at last shot through three standing waves that half filled the canoe. Below the worst rapids the Pongo exhibits a swift succession of natural wonders. Fern-clad cliffs border it, a bush resembling the juniper reaches its dainty finger-like stems far out over the river, and the banks are heavily clad with mosses. The great woods, silent, impenetrable, mantle the high slopes and stretch up to the limits of vision. Cascades tumble from the cliff summits or go rippling down the long inclines of the slate beds set almost on edge. Finally appear the white pinnacles of limestone that hem in the narrow lower entrance or outlet of the Pongo. Beyond this — passage one suddenly comes out upon the edge of a rolling forest- clad region, the rubber territory, the country of the great woods. Here the Andean realm ends and Amazonia begins. From the summits of the white cliffs 4,000 feet above the river we were in a few days to have one of the most extensive views in South America. The break between the Andean Cordillera and the hill-dotted plains of the lower Urubamba valley is almost as sharp as a Shoreline. The rolling plains are covered with leagues upon leagues of dense, shadowy, fever-haufited jungle. The great river winds through in a series of splendid meanders, and with so broad a channel as to make it visible almost to the horizon. Down river THE RAPIDS AND CANYONS OF THE URUBAMBA 21 from our lookout one can reach ocean steamers at Iquitos with less than two weeks of travel. It is three weeks to the Pacific via Cuzco and more than a month if one takes the route across the high bleak lava-covered country which we were soon to cross on our way to the coast at Camana. CHAPTER III THE RUBBER FORESTS Tuer white limestone cliffs at Pongo de Mainique are a bound- ary between two great geographic provinces (Fig. 17). Down val- ley are the vast river plains, drained by broad meandering rivers; ° a J ° are oa? . \e2 M:A:Z:0 fo Ne e c . s oR BBER STATION eS ve oe eye ° oo o ° O° " o° ee YWfvujes :o -\, AL © 0 a) 4 ° ° Ma of Xo y Ae, gets = 0°. % ° y Koy > emia TROPICAL? LOWLANDS? Bewe oe L/ ye °° DENSE TROPICAL FOREST “HEVEA’ RUBBER Ae 0: if INDIAN POPULATION AN WY 5 ato 7, i hy / Hs, Ly 7\%o i Ways OF MODERATE RELIEF|¢, ULL p JES eek Jo 00/24 Lol s/o ofp frp, Z Shy J “RUBBER PLAYA PLANTATION. CB OO Shp, 2 VENOW INDE AID Se Yip PTS Fie. 17—Regional diagram of the Eastern Andes (here the Cordillera Vileapampa) and the adjacent tropical plains. For an explanation of the method of construction and the symbolism of the diagram see p. 51. ” , RUBBERS up valley are the rugged spurs of the eastern Andes and their en- canyoned streams (Fig. 18). There are outliers of the Andes still farther toward the northeast where hangs the inevitable haze of the tropical horizon, but the country beyond them differs in no important respect from that immediately below the Pongo. The foot-path to the summit of the cliffs is too narrow and 22 THE RUBBER FORESTS 23 steep for even the most agile mules. It is simply impassable for animals without hands. In places the packs are lowered by ropes over steep ledges and men must scramble down from one project- ing root or swinging vine to another. In the breath- less jungle it is a wearing task to pack in all sup- plies for the station be- low the Pongo and to earry out the season’s rubber. Recently however the anvient track has been replaced by a road that was cut with great la- bor, and by much blast- ing, across the mountain barrier, and at last mule transport has taken the place of the Indian. In the dry season it is a fair and delightful country—that on the bor- der of the mountains. In the wet season the trav- eler is either actually ma- rooned or he must slosh through rivers of mud and water that deluge the trails and break the hearts of his beasts (Fig. diagrams in the pages following. A rep- resents Fig. 17; B, 42; C, 36; D, 32; EH, 34; 14). Here and there a_ » 095. G26; and H, 65. 24 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU large shallow-rooted tree has come crashing down across the trail and with its four feet of circumference and ten feet of plank buttress it is as difficult to move as a house. A new trail must be cut around it. A little farther on, where the valley wall steepens and one may look down a thousand feet of slope to the bed of a mountain torrent, a patch of trail has become soaked with water and the mules pick their way, trembling, across it. Two days from Yavero one of our mules went over the trail, and though she was finally recovered she died of her injuries the following night. After a month’s work in the forest a mule must run free for two months to recover. The pack- ers count on losing one beast out of five for every journey into the forest. It is not solely a matter of work, though this is terrific; it is quite largely a matter of forage. In spite of its profusion of life (Fig. 13) and its really vast wealth of species, the tropical forest is all but barren of grass. Sugar cane is a fair substitute, but there are only a few cultivated spots. The more tender leaves of the trees, the young shoots of cane in the carrizo swamps, and the grass-like foliage of the low bamboo are the chief substi- tutes for pasture. But they lead to various disorders, besides re- quiring considerable labor on the part of the dejected peons who must gather them after a day’s heavy work with the packs. Overcoming these enormous difficulties is expensive and some one must pay the bill. As is usual in a pioneer region, the native laborer pays a large part of it in unrequited toil; the rest is paid by the rubber consumer. For this is one of the cases where a direct road connects the civilized consumer and the barbarous pro- ducer. What a story it could tell if a ball of smoke-cured rubber on a New York dock were endowed with speech—of the wet jungle path, of enslaved peons, of vile abuses by immoral agents, of all the toil and sickness that make the tropical lowland a reproach! In the United States the specter of slavery haunted the na- tional conscience almost from the beginning of national life, and the ghost was laid only at the cost of one of the bloodiest wars in history. In other countries, as in sugar-producing Brazil, the freeing of the slaves meant not a war but the verge of financial Fie. 20. Fic. 19—Moss-draped trees in the rain forest near Abra Tocate between Rosalina and Pongo de Mainique. Fig. 20—Yavero, a rubber station on the Yavero (Paucartambo) River, a tributary of the Urubamba. Elevation 1,600 feet (490 m.). Fie. 21—Clearing in the tropical forest between Rosalina and Pabellon. This represents the border region where the forest-dwelling Machiganga Indians and the mountain Indians meet. The clearings are occupied by Machigangas whose chief crops are yuca and corn; in the extreme upper left-hand corner are grassy slopes occupied by Quechua herdsmen and farmers who grow potatoes and corn. THE RUBBER FORESTS 25 ruin besides a fundamental change in the social order and prob- lems as complex and wearisome as any that war can bring. Everywhere abolition was secured at frightful cost. _ The spirit that upheld the new founders of the western repub- _ lies in driving out slavery was admirable, but as much cannot be said of their work of reconstruction. We like to pass over those dark days in our own history. In South America there has lin- gered from the old slave-holding days down to the present, a labor system more insidious than slavery, yet no less revolting in its de- tails, and infinitely more difficult to stamp out. It is called peonage; it should be called slavery. In Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil it flourishes now as it ever did in the fruitful soil of the interior provinces where law and order are bywords and where the scarcity of workmen will long impel men to enslave labor when they can- not employ it. Peonage 2s slavery, though as in all slave systems there are many forms under which the system is worked out. We commonly think that the typical slave is one who is made to work hard, given but little food, and at the slightest provocation is tied to a post and brutally whipped. This is indeed the fate of many slaves or ‘‘peons’’ so-called, in the Amazon forests; but it is no more the rule than it was in the South before the war, for a peon is a valuable piece of property and if a slave raider travel five hundred miles through forest and jungle-swamp to capture an Indian you may depend upon it that he will not beat him to death merely for the fun of it. That unjust and frightfully cruel floggings are inflicted at ’ times and in some places is of course a result of the lack of official restraint that drunken owners far from the arm of the law some- times enjoy. When a man obtains a rubber concession from the government he buys a kingdom. Many of the rubber territories are so remote from the cities that officials can with great difficulty be secured to stay at the customs ports. High salaries must be paid, heavy taxes collected, and grafting of the most flagrant kind winked at. Often the concessionaire himself is chief magistrate of his kingdom by law. Under such a system, remote from all civilizing influences, the rubber producer himself oftentimes a law- 26 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU less border character or a downright criminal, no system of goy- ernment would be adequate, least of all one like peonage that per- mits or ignores flagrant wrongs because it is so expensive to en- force justice. The peonage system continues by reason of that extraordinary | difficulty in the development of the tropical lowland of South America—the lack of a labor supply. The population of Amazonia now numbers less than one person to the square mile. The people are distributed in small groups of a dozen to twenty each in scat- tered villages along the river banks or in concealed clearings reached by trails known only to the Indians. Nearly all of them still live in the same primitive state in which they lived at the time of the Discovery. In the Urubamba region a single cotton shirt is worn by the married men and women, while the girls and boys in many cases go entirely naked except for a loincloth or a necklace of nuts or monkeys’ teeth (Fig. 23). A cane hut with a thatch to keep out the heavy rains is their shelter and their food is the yuca, sugar cane, Indian corn, bananas of many kinds, and fish. A patch of yuca once planted will need but the most trifling attention for years. The small spider monkey is their greatest delicacy and to procure it they will often abandon every other project and return at their own sweet and belated will. In the midst of this natural life of the forest-dwelling Indian appears the rubber man, who, to gather rubber, must have rubber ‘‘nickers.’’ If he lives on the edge of the great Andean Cordil- lera, laborers may be secured from some of the lower valleys, but they must be paid well for even a temporary stay in the hot and unhealthful lowlands. Farther out in the great forest country the plateau Indians will not go and only the scattered tribes remain from which to recruit laborers. For the nature-life of the Indian what has the rubber gatherer to offer? Money? The Indian uses it for ornament only. When I once tried with money to pay an Indian for a week’s services he refused it. In exchange for his severe labor he wanted nothing more than a fish-hook and a ring, the two costing not more than a penny apiece! When his love for ornament has once been gratified the Indian ceases to work. His ‘ny euvo peyozeyd -S8818 @ JO J9UIOO OY} SI Jo] OY} UO “MeP[IU pus szuspor ysuIvSe W01}09}01d IO} Po10JS SI ULOD YOIYM UO WAO;}eId wv St WYSII oY} UO oinzord oY} episjno ysne “eUr[rsoy Mofeq ‘AaTIRA VaMILGnIA “OyeUy BIUBS 4e duieMs poor & UL SULIPUT VSULSITOVTYT YIM Suripery—z%z “O17 %» ‘oues pus “syexUII} “W100 Surkiivd oy pasn osye oie Aoyy, ‘sue pue seovy Sut -qnep 10 SuyusMeu10 1o¥ o1yoo por SurAI1Vd Joy pasn ore syors ueaom Ajauy oy} {4In1y pue “‘ysy ‘omed Sutki1e0 IO} JUaTMeAMOD SI yows YIOM -uedo ey], “89014 Surquitfo ur sysoddns yeey 107 A[UoUIUIOD 480m pesn SI JauIOD puey-1yS14 soddn oy} UL p100 eYJ, ‘Poof Fo o01n0s 4ue}10d “Ul Uv se pejuny pue ‘surv[d ey} Jo Jepiog yueoe{pe ay} pue sAo][VA UTeJUNOW UsE;S¥e ayy Surziqeyur Aexiny pel[vo-os ay ATqeqord— AoyIny PITA [CUS B JO azI8 oy} qnoqe P1Iq B Jo SYON|SMINIpP INO} PUB S1oyyLay SUIeyUOD 7e44 aU st 1a}UD0 oT} JO 4Jo, 8} OF ‘seov[yoou Aaevay pue ‘sjuvpuoed ‘ssurs4s our dn opeu oie synu ayy, ‘o10Ae_ 4x SUBIPU] VSuLSIYOeTY 94} JO Soliqey pur syusMIVUIQ—EzZ “DIT sg gee aa RRR a > Le THE RUBBER FORESTS 27 food and shelter and clothing are of the most primitive kind, but they are the best in the world for him because they are the only kind he has known. So where money and finery fail the lash comes in. The rubber man says that the Indian is lazy and must be made to work; that there is a great deal of work to be done and the Indian is the only laborer who can be found; that if rubber and chocolate are produced the Indian must be made to produce them; and that if he will not produce them for pay he must be enslaved. It is a law of the rubber country that when an Indian falls into debt to a white man he must work for the latter until the debt is discharged. If he runs away before the debt is canceled or if he refuses to work or does too little work he may be flogged. Under special conditions such laws are wise. In the hands of the rubber men they are the basis of slavery. For, once the rubber interests begin to suffer, the promoters look around for a chance to capture free Indians. An expedition is fitted out that spends weeks ex- ploring this river or that in getting on the track of unattached In- dians. When a settlement is found the men are enslaved and taken long distances from home finally to reach a rubber property. There they are given a corner of a hut to sleep in, a few cheap clothes, a rubber-picking outfit, and a name. In return for these articles the unwilling Indian is charged any fanciful price that comes into the mind of his ‘‘owner,’’ and he must thereupon work at a per diem wage also fixed by the owner. Since his obligations increase with time, the Indian may die over two thousand dollars in debt! Peonage has left frightful scars upon the country. In some places the Indians are fugitives, cultivating little farms in se- ereted places but visiting them only at night or after carefully re- connoitering the spot. They change their camps frequently and make their way from place to place by secret trails, now spending a night or two under the shelter of a few palm leaves on a sand- bar, again concealing themselves in almost impenetrable jungle. If the hunter sometimes discovers a beaten track he follows it only to find it ending on a cliff face or on the edge of a lagoon where 28 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU concealment is perfect. There are tribes that shoot the white man at sight and regard him as their bitterest enemy. Experience has led them to believe that.only a dead white is a good white, revers- ing our saying about the North American Indian; and that even when he comes among them on peaceful errands he is likely to leave behind him a trail of syphilis and other venereal diseases scarcely less deadly than his bullets. However, the peonage system is not hideous everywhere and in all its aspects. There are white owners who realize that in the long run the friendship of the Indians is an asset far greater than . unwilling service and deadly hatred. Some of them have indeed intermarried with the Indians and live among them in a state but little above savagery. In the Mamoré country are a few owners of original princely concessions who have grown enormously wealthy and yet who continue to live a primitive life among their scores of illegitimate descendants. The Indians look upon them as benefactors, as indeed many of them are, defending the Indians from ill treatment by other whites, giving them clothing and orna- ments, and exacting from them only a moderate amount of labor. In some eases indeed the whites have gained more than simple gratitude for their humane treatment of the Indians, some of whom serve their masters with real devotion. When the ‘‘rubber barons’’ wish to discourage investigation of their system they invite the traveler to leave and he is given a canoe and oarsmen with which to make his way out of the dis- trict. Refusal to accept an offer of canoes and men is a declara- tion of war. An agent of one of the London companies accepted such a challenge and was promptly told that he would not leave the territory alive. The threat would have held true in the case of a less skilful man. Though Indians slept in the canoes to pre- vent their seizure, he slipped past the guards in the night, swam to the opposite shore, and there secured a canoe within which he made a difficult journey down river to the nearest post where food and an outfit could be secured. A few companies operating on or near the border of the Cordil- lera have adopted a normal labor system, dependent chiefly upon THE RUBBER FORESTS 29 people from the plateau and upon the thoroughly willing assist- ance of well-paid forest Indians. The Compania Gomera de Mainique at Puerto Mainique just below the Pongo is one of these and its development of the region without violation of native rights is in the highest degree praiseworthy. In fact the whole conduct of this company is interesting to a geographer, as it reflects at every point the physical nature of the country. The government is eager to secure foreign capital, but in east- ern Peru can offer practically nothing more than virgin wealth, that is, land and the natural resources of the land. There are no roads, virtually no trails, no telegraph lines, and in most cases no labor. Since the old Spanish grants ran at right angles to the river so as to give the owners a cross-section of varied resources, the up-river plantations do not extend down irto the rubber coun- try. Hence the more heavily forested lower valleys and plains are the property of the state. A man can buy a piece of land down there, but from any tract within ordinary means only a primitive living can be obtained. The pioneers therefore are the rubber men who produce a precious substance that can stand the enormous tax on production and transportation. They do not want the land—only the exclusive right to tap the rubber trees upon it. Thus there has arisen the concession plan whereby a large tract is obtained under conditions of money payment or of improvements that will attract settlers or of a tax on the export. The ‘‘caucho’’ or poorer rubber of the Urubamba Valley be- gins at 3,000 feet (915 m.) and the ‘‘hevea”’ or better class is a lower-valley and plains product. The rubber trees thereabouts produce 60 grams (2 ozs.) of dry rubber each week for eight months. After yielding rubber for this length of time a tree is allowed to rest four or five years. ‘‘Caucho’’ is produced from trees that are cut down and ringed with machetes, but it is from fifty to sixty cents cheaper owing to the impurities that get into it. The wood, not the nut, of the Palma carmona is used for smok- ing or ‘‘curing’’ the rubber. The government had long been urged to build a road into the region in place of the miserable track—absolutely impassable in the wet season—that heretofore 30 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU constituted the sole means of exit. About ten years ago Senor Robledo at last built a government trail from Rosalina to Yavero about 100 miles long. While it is a wretched trail it is better than the old one, for it is more direct and it is better drained. In the wet season parts of it are turned into rivers and lakes, but it is probably the best that could be done with the small grant of twenty thousand dollars. With at least an improvement in the trail it became possible for a rubber company: to induce cargadores or packers to trans- port merchandise and rubber and to have a fair chance of success. Whereupon a rubber company was organized which obtained a con- cession of 28,000 hectares (69,188 acres) of land on condition that the company finish a road one and one-half meters wide to the Pongo, connecting with the road which the government had ex- tended to Yavero. The land given in payment was not continuous but was selected in lots by the company in such a way as to secure the best rubber trees over an area several times the size of the concession. The road was finished by William Tell after four years’ work at a cost of about seventy-five thousand dollars. The last part of it was blasted out of slate and limestone and in 1912 the first pack train entered Puerto Mainique. The first rubber was taken out in November, 1910, and produc- tive possibilities proved by the collection of 9,000 kilos (19,841 pounds) in eight months. If a main road were the chief problem of the rubber company the business would soon be on a paying basis, but for every mile of road there must be cut several miles of narrow trail (Fig. 14), as the rubber trees grow scattered about—a clump of a half dozen here and five hundred feet farther on another clump and only scat- tered individuals between. Furthermore, about twenty-five years ago rubber men from the Ucayali came up here in launches and canoes and cut down large numbers of trees within reach of the water courses and by ringing the trunks every few feet with machetes ‘‘bled’’ them rapidly and thus covered a large territory in a short time, and made huge sums of money when the price of rubber was high. Only a few of the small trees that were left THE RUBBER FORESTS ~- 31 are now mature. These, the mature trees that were overlooked, and the virgin stands farther from the rivers are the present sources of rubber. In addition to the trails small cabins must be built to shelter the hired laborers from the plateau, many of whom bring along their women folk to cook for them. The combined expense to a company of these necessary improvements before production can begin is exceedingly heavy. There is only one alternative for the prospective exploiter: to become a vagrant rubber gatherer. With tents, guns, machetes, cloth, baubles for trading, tinned food for emergencies, and with pockets full of English gold parties have started out to seek fortunes in the rubber forests. If the friend- ship of a party of Indians can be secured by adequate gifts large amounts of rubber can be gathered in a short time, for the Indians know where the rubber trees grow. On the other hand, many for- tunes have been lost in the rubber country. Some of the tribes have been badly treated by other adventurers and attack the new- comers from ambush or gather rubber for a while only to over- turn the canoe in a rapid and let the river relieve them of selfish friends. The Compania Gomera de Mainique started out by securing the good-will of the forest Indians, the Machigangas. They come and go in friendly visits to the port at Yavero. If one of them is sick he can secure free medicine from the agent. If he wishes goods on credit he has only to ask for them, for the agent knows that the Indian’s sense of fairness will bring him back to work for the company. Without previous notice a group of Indians appears: “We owe,’’ they announce. ‘‘Good,’’ says the agent, ‘‘build me a house.’’ They select the trees. Before they cut them down they address them solemnly. The trees must not hold their destruction against the Indians and they must not try to resist the sharp machetes. Then the Indians set to work. They fell a tree, bind it with light ropes woven from the wild cotton, and haul it to its place. That is all for the day. They play in the sun, do a little hunting, or 32 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU look over the agent’s house, touching everything, talking little, exclaiming much. They dip their wet fingers in the sugar bowl and taste, turn salt out upon their hands, hold colored solutions from the medicine chest up to the light, and pull out and push in the corks of the bottles. At the end of a month or two the house is done. Then they gather their women and babies together and say: ‘‘Now we go,’’ without asking if the work corresponds with the cost of the articles they had bought. Their judgment is good how- ever. Their work is almost always more valuable than the arti- cles. Then they shake hands all around. ‘‘We will come again,’’ they say, and in a moment have disap- peared in the jungle that overhangs the trail. With such labor the Compafiia Gomera de Mainique can do something, but itis not much. The regular seasonal tasks of road- building and rubber-picking must be done by imported labor. This is secured chiefly at Abancay, where live groups of plateau In- dians that have become accustomed to the warm climate of the Abancay basin. They are employed for eight or ten months at an average rate of fifty cents gold per day, and receive in addition only the simplest articles of food. At the end of the season the gang leaders are paid a gratifica- ci6n, or bonus, the size of which depends upon the amount of rub- ber collected, and this in turn depends upon the size of the gang and the degree of willingness to work. In the books of the com- pany I saw a record of gratificaciénes running as high as $600 in gold for a season’s work. Some of the laborers become sick and are cared for by the agent until they recover or can be sent back to their homes. Most of them have fever before they return. The rubber costs the company two soles ($1.00) produced at Yavero. The two weeks’ transportation to Cuzco costs three and a half soles ($1.75) per twenty-five pounds. The exported rubber, known to the trade as Mollendo rubber, in contrast to the finer ‘‘Pard’”’ rubber from the lower Amazon, is shipped to Hamburg. The cost for transportation from port to port is $24.00 per Eng- lish ton (1,016 kilos). There is a Peruvian tax of 8 per cent of THE RUBBER FORESTS 33 the net value in Europe, and a territorial tax of two soles ($1.00) per hundred pounds. All supplies except the few vegetables grown on the spot cost tremendously. Even dynamite, hoes, cloth- ing, rice—to mention only a few necessities—must pay the heavy cost of transportation after imposts, railroad and ocean freight, storage and agents’ percentages are added. The effect of a dis- turbed market is extreme. When, in 1911, the price of rubber fell to $1.50 a kilo at Hamburg the company ceased exporting. When it dropped still lower in 1912 production also stopped, and it is still doubtful, in view of the growing competition of the Hast-Indian — plantations with their cheap labor, whether operations will ever be resumed. Within three years no less than a dozen large com- panies in eastern Peru and Bolivia have ceased operations. In one concession on the Madre de Dios the withdrawal of the agents and laborers from the posts turned at last into flight, as the forest Indians, on learning the company’s policy, rapidly ascended the river in force, committing numerous depredations. The great war has also added to the difficulties of production. Facts like these are vital in the consideration of the future of the Amazon basin and especially its habitability. It was the dream of Humboldt that great cities should arise in the midst of the tropical forests of the Amazon and that the whole lowland plain of that river basin should become the home of happy mil- lions. Humboldt’s vision may have been correct, though a hun- dred years have brought us but little nearer its realization. Now, as in the past four centuries, man finds his hands too feeble to con- trol the great elemental forces which have shaped history. The most he can hope for in the next hundred years at least is the ability to dodge Nature a little more successfully, and here and there by studies in tropical hygiene and medicine, by the substi- tution of water-power for human energy, to carry a few of the out- posts and prepare the way for a final assault in the war against the hard conditions of climate and relief. We hear of the Madeira- Mamoré railroad, 200 miles long, in the heart of a tropical forest and of the commercial revolution it will bring. Do we realize that the forest which overhangs the rails is as big as the whole plain 34 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU between the Rockies and the Appalachians, and that the proposed line would extend only as far as from St. Louis to Kansas City, or from Galveston to New Orleans? Hiven if twenty whites were eager to go where now there is but one reluctant pioneer, we should still have but a halting develop- ment on account of the scarcity of labor. When, three hundred years ago, the Isthmus of Panama stood in his way, Gomara wrote to his king: ‘‘There are mountains, but there are also hands,’’ as if men could be conjured up from the tropical jungle. From that day to this the scarcity of labor has been the chief dif- ficulty in the lowland regions of tropical South America. Even when medicine shall have been advanced to the point where resi- dence in the tropics can be made safe, the Amazon basin will lack an adequate supply of workmen. Where Humboldt saw thriving cities, the population is still less than one to the square mile in an area as large as fifteen of our Mississippi Valley states. We hear much about a rich soil and little about intolerable insects; the climate favors a good growth of vegetation, but a man can starve in a tropical forest as easily as in a desert; certain tribu- taries of the Negro are bordered by rich rubber forests, yet not a single Indian hut may be found along their banks. Will men of the white race dig up the rank vegetation, sleep in grass ham- mocks, live in the hot and humid air, or will they stay in the cooler regions of the north and south? Will they rear children in the temperate zones, or bury them in the tropics? What Gorgas did for Panama was done for intelligent people. Can it be duplicated in the case of ignorant and stupid laborers? - Shall the white man with wits fight it out with Nature in a tropical forest, or fight it out with his equals under better skies? The tropics must be won by strong hands of the lowlier classes who are ignorant or careless of hygiene, and not by the khaki-clad robust young men like those who work at Panama. Tropical medi- cine can do something for these folk, but it cannot do much. And we cannot surround every laborer’s cottage with expensive screens, oiled ditches, and well-kept lawns. There is a practical optimism and a sentimental optimism. The one is based on facts; THE RUBBER FORESTS 35 the other on assumptions. It is pleasant to think that the tropical forest may be conquered. It is nonsense to say that we are now conquering it in any comprehensive and permanent way. That sort of conquest is still a dream, as when Humboldt wrote over a hundred years ago. CHAPTER IV THE FOREST INDIANS Tue people of a tropical forest live under conditions not unlike those of the desert. The Sahara contains 2,000,000 persons within its borders, a density of one-half to the square mile. This is al- most precisely the density of population of a tract of equivalent size in, the lowland forests of South America. Like the oases groups in the desert of aridity are the scattered groups along the river margins of the forest. The desert trails run from spring to spring or along a valley floor where there is seepage or an inter- mittent stream; the rivers are the highways of the forest, the flowing roads, and away from them one is lost in as true a sense as one may be lost in the desert. A man may easily starve in the tropical forest. Before start- ing on even a short journey of two or three days a forest Indian stocks his canoe with sugar cane and yuca and a little parched corn. He knows the settlements as well as his desert brother knows the springs. The Pahute Indian of Utah lives in the irri- gated valleys and makes annual excursions across the desert to the distant mountains to gather the seeds of the nut pine. The Machiganga lives in the hills above the Urubamba and annually comes down through the forest to the river to fish during the dry season. The Machigangas are one of the important tribes of the Ama- zon basin. Though they are dispersed to some extent upon the plains their chief groups are scattered through the heads of a large number of valleys near the eastern border of the Andes. Chief among the valleys they occupy are the Pileopata, Tono, Pifi-pifii, Yavero, Yuyato, Shirineiri, Ticumpinea, Timpia, and Camisea (Fig. 203). In their distribution, in their relations with each other, in their manner of life, and to some extent in their personal traits, they display characteristics strikingly like those 36 THE FOREST INDIANS iat seen in desert peoples. Though the forest that surrounds them suggests plenty and the rivers the possibility of free movement with easy intercourse, the struggle of life, as in the desert, is against useless things. Travel in the desert is a conflict with heat and aridity; but travel in the tropic forest is a struggle against space, heat, and a superabundant and all but useless vegetation. The Machigangas are one of the subtribes of the Campas In- dians, one of the most numerous groups in the Amazon Valley. It is estimated that there are in all about 14,000 to 16,000 of them. Each subtribe numbers from one to four thousand, and the terri- tory they occupy extends from the limits of the last plantations— for example, Rosalina in the Urubamba Valley—downstream be- yond the edge of the plains. Among them three subtribes are still hostile to the whites: the Cashibos, the Chonta Campas, and the Campas Bravos. In certain cases the Cashibos are said to be anthropophagous, in the belief that they will assume the strength and intellect of those they eat. This group is also continuously at war with its neighbors, goes naked, uses stone hatchets, as in ages past, be- cause of its isolation and unfriendliness, and defends the entrances to the tribal huts with dart and traps. The Cashibos are diminish- ing in numbers and are now scattered through the valley of the Gran Pajonal, the left bank of the Pachitea, and the Pampa del Sacramento.* The friendliest tribes live in the higher valley heads, where they have constant communication with the whites. The use of the bow and arrow has not, however, been discontinued among them, in spite of the wide introduction of the old-fashioned muzzle-load- ing shotgun, which they prize much more highly than the latest rifle or breech-loading shotgun because of its simplicity and cheap- 1The Cashibos of the Pachitea are the tribe for whom the Piros besought Herndon to produce “some great and infectious disease” which could be carried up the river and let loose amongst them (Herndon, Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon, Washington, 1854, Vol. 1, p. 196). This would-be artfulness suggests itself as some- thing of a match against the cunning of the Cashibos whom rumor reports to imitate the sounds of the forest animals with such skill as to betray into their hands the hunters of other tribes (see von Tschudi, Travels in Peru During the Years 1838-1842, translated from the German by Thomasina Ross, New York, 1849, p. 404). 38 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU ness. Accidents are frequent among them owing to the careless use of fire-arms. On our last day’s journey on the Urubamba above the mouth of the Timpia one of our Indian boys dropped his canoe pole on the hammer of a loaded shotgun, and not only shot his own fingers to pieces, but gravely wounded his father (Fig. 2). In spite of his suffering the old chief directed our work at the canoe and even was able to tell us the location of the most favora- ble channel. Though the night that followed was as black as ink, with even the stars obscured by a rising storm, his directions never failed. We poled our way up five long rapids without spe- cial difficulties, now working into the lee of a rock whose location he knew within a few yards, now paddling furiously across the channel to catch the upstream current of an eddy. The principal groups of Machigangas live in the middle Uru- bamba and its tributaries, the Yavero, Yuyato, Shirineiri, Ticum- pinea, Timpia, Pachitea, and others. There is a marked difference in the use of the land and the mode of life among the different groups of this subtribe. Those who live in the lower plains and river ‘‘playas,’’ as the patches of flood plain are called, have a sin- gle permanent dwelling and alternately fish and hunt. Those that live on hill farms have temporary reed huts on the nearest sand- bars and spend the best months of the dry season—April to Oc- tober—in fishing and drying fish to be carried to their mountain homes (Fig. 21). Some families even duplicate chacras or farms at the river bank and grow yuca and sugar cane. In latter years smallpox, malaria, and the rubber hunters have destroyed many of the river villages and driven the Indians to, permanent resi- dence in the hills or, where raids occur, along secret trails to hid- den camps. Their system of agriculture is strikingly adapted to some im- portant features of tropical soil. The thin hillside soils of the region are but poorly stocked with humus, even in their virgin condition. Fallen trees and foliage decay so quickly that the layer of forest mold is exceedingly thin and the little that is incor- porated in the soil is confined to a shallow surface layer. To meet these special conditions the Indian makes new clearings by gir- THE FOREST INDIANS 39 dling and burning the trees. When the soil becomes worn out and the crops diminish, the old clearing is abandoned and allowed to revert to natural growth and a new farm is planted to corn and yuca. The population is so scattered and thin that the land assign- ment system current among the plateau Indians is not practised among the Machigangas. Several families commonly live together and may be separated from their nearest neighbors by many miles of forested mountains. The land is free for all, and, though some heavy labor is necessary to clear it, once a small patch is cleared it is easy to extend the tract by limited annual cuttings. Local tracts of naturally unforested land are rarely planted, chiefly be- cause the absence of shade has allowed the sun to burn out the limited humus supply and to prevent more from accumulating. The best soil of the mountain slopes is found where there is the heaviest growth of timber, the deepest shade, the most humus, and good natural drainage. It is the same on the playas along the river; the recent additions to the flood plain are easy to cultivate, but they lack humus and a fine matrix which retaims moisture and prevents drought or at least physiologic dryness. Here, too, the timbered areas or the cane swamps are always selected for planting. The traditions of the Machigangas go back to the time of the Inea conquest, when the forest Indians, the ‘‘ Antis,’’ were subju- gated and compelled to pay tribute.*, When the Inca family itself fled from Cuzco after the Spanish Conquest and sought refuge in the wilderness it was to the Machiganga country that they came by way of the Vileabamba and Pampaconas Valleys. Afterward came the Spaniards and though they did not exercise governmental au- ?The early chronicles contain several references to Antisuyu and the Antis. Garcilaso de la Vega’s description of the Inca conquests in Antisuyu are well known (Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, Book 4, Chapters 16 and 17, Hakluyt Soc. Publs., Ist Ser., No. 41, 1869 and Book 7, Chapters 13 and 14, No. 45, 1871). Saleamayhua who also chronicles these conquests relates a legend concerning the tribute payers of the eastern valleys. On one occasion, he says, three hundred Antis came laden with gold from Opatari. Their arrival at Cuzco was coincident with a killing frost that ruined all the crops of the basin whence the three hundred fortunates were ordered with their gold to the top of the high hill of Pachatucsa (Pachatusun) and there buried with it (An Account of the Antiquities of Peru, Hakluyt Soc. Publs., Ist Ser., No. 48, 1873). 40 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU thority over the forest Indians they had close relations with them. Land grants were made to white pioneers for special services or through sale and with the land often went the right to exploit the people on it. Some of the concessions were owned by people who for generations knew nothing save by hearsay of the Indians who dwelt in the great forests of the valleys. In later years they have been exploring their lands and establishing so-called relations whereby the savage ‘‘buys’’ a dollar’s worth of powder or knives for whatever number of dollars’ worth of rubber the owner may care to extract from him. The forest Indian is still master of his lands throughout most of the Machiganga country. He is cruelly enslaved at the rubber posts, held by the loose bonds of a desultory trade at others, and in a few places, as at Pongo de Mainique, gives service for both love and profit, but in many places it is impossible to establish con- trol or influence. The lowland Indian never falls into the abject condition of his Quechua brother on the plateau. He is self-re- liant, proud, and independent. He neither cringes before a white nor looks up to him as a superior being. I was greatly impressed by the bearing of the first of the forest tribes I met in August, 1911, at Santo Anato. I had built a brisk fire and was enjoying its comfort when La Sama returned with some Indians whom he had secured to clear his playa. The tallest of the lot, wearing a colored band of deer skin around his thick hair and a gaudy bunch of yellow feathers down his back, came up, looked me squarely in the eye, and asked “‘Tatiry payta?’’ (What is your name?) When I replied he quietly sat down by the fire, helping himself to the roasted corn I had prepared in the hot ashes. A few days later when we came to the head of a rapid I was busy sketching-in my topographic map and did not hear his twice repeated request to leave the boat while the party reconnoitered the rapid. Watch- ing his opportunity he came alongside from the rear—he was steersman—and, turning just as he was leaving the boat, gave me a whack in the forehead with his open palm. La Sama saw the motion and protested. The surly answer was: THE FOREST INDIANS 41 ‘*T twice asked him to get out and he didn’t move. What does he think we run the canoe to the bank for?’’ To him the making of a map was inexplicable; I was merely a stupid white person who didn’t know enough to get out of a canoe when told! The plateau Indian has been kicked about so long that all his independence has been destroyed. His goods have been stolen, his services demanded without recompense, in many places he has no right to land, and his few real rights are abused beyond belief. The difference between him and the forest Indian is due quite largely to differences of environment. The plateau Indian is agricultural, the forest Indian nomadic and in a hunting stage of development; the unforested plateau offers no means for concealment of person or property, the forest offers hidden and difficult paths, easy means for concealment, for ambush, and for wide dispersal of an afflicted tribe. The brutal white of the plateau follows altogether different methods when he finds himself in the Indian country, far from military assistance, surrounded by fearless savages. He may cheat but he does not steal, and his brutality is always care- fully suited to both time and place. The Machigangas are now confined to the forest, but the limits of their territory were once farther upstream, where they were in frequent conflict with the plateau Indians. As late as 1835, ac- cording to General Miller,* they occupied the land as far upstream as the ‘‘Eincuentro’’ (junction) of the Urubamba and the Yanatili (Fig. 53). Miller likewise notes that the Chuntaguirus, ‘‘a superior race of Indians’’ who lived ‘‘toward the Marafion,’’ came up the river ‘‘200 leagues’? to barter with the people thereabouts. ‘“‘They bring parrots and other birds, monkeys, cotton robes white and painted, wax balsams, feet of the gran bestia, feather ornaments for the head, and tiger and other skins, which they ex- change for hatchets, knives, scissors, needles, buttons, and any sort of glittering bauble.’’ * Notice of a Journey to the Northward and also to the Northeastward of Cuzco. Royal Geog. Soc. Journ., Vol. 6, 1836, pp. 174-186. 42 . ‘THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU On their yearly excursions they traveled in a band numbering from 200 to 300, since at the mouth of the Paucartambo (Yavero) they were generally set upon by the Pucapacures. The journey upstream required three months; with the current they returned home in fifteen days. Their place of meeting at the mouth of the Yanatili was a response to a long strip of grassland that extends down the deep and dry Urubamba Valley, as shown in Figs. 53-B and 55. The wet forests, in which the Machigangas live, cover the hills back of the valley plantations; the belt of dry grassland terminates far within the general limits of the red man’s domain and only 2,000 feet above the sea. It is in this strip of low grassland that on the one hand the highland and valley dwellers, and on the other the Indians of the hot forested valleys and the adjacent lowland found a convenient place for barter. The same physiographic features are repeated in adjacent valleys of large size that drain the eastern aspect of the Peruvian Andes, and in each case they have given rise to the periodic excursions of the trader. These annual journeys are no longer made. The planters have crept down valley. The two best playas below Rosalina are now being cleared. Only a little space remains between the lowest val- ley plantations and the highest rubber stations. Furthermore, the Indians have been enslaved by the rubber men from the Ucayali. The Machigangas, many of whom are runaway peons, will no longer take cargoes down valley for fear of recapture. They have the cautious spirit of fugitives except in their remote valleys. There they are secure and now and then reassert their old spirit when a lawless trader tries to browbeat them into an unprofitable trade. Also, they are yielding to the alluring call of the planter. At Santo Anato they are clearing a playa in exchange for am- munition, machetes, brandy, and baubles. They no longer make annual excursions to get these things. They have only to call at the nearest plantation. There is always a wolf before the door of the planter—the lack of labor. Yet, as on every frontier, he turns wolf himself when the lambs come, and without shame takes a week’s work for a penny mirror, or, worse still, supplies them THE FOREST INDIANS 43 with firewater, for that will surely bring them back to him. Since this is expensive they return to their tribal haunts with nothing except a debauched spirit and an appetite from which they can- not run away as they did from their task masters in the rubber forest. Hence the vicious circle: more brandy, more labor; more labor, more cleared land; more cleared land, more brandy; more brandy, less Indian. But by that time the planter has a large sugar estate. Then he can begin to buy the more expensive plateau labor, and in turn debauch it. Nature as well as man works against the scattered tribes of Machigangas and their forest kinsmen. Their country is exceed- ingly broken by ramifying mountain spurs and valleys overhung with cliffs or bordered by bold, wet, fern-clad slopes. It is useless to try to cut your way by a direct route from one point to another. The country is mantled with heavy forest. You must follow the valleys, the ancient trails of the people. The larger valleys offer smooth sand-bars along the border of which canoes may be towed upstream, and there are little cultivated places for camps. But only a few of the tribes live along them, for they are also more accessible to the rubbermen. The smaller valleys, difficult of access, are more secure and there the tribal rem- nants live today. While the broken country thus offers a refuge to fugitive bands it is the broken country and its forest cover that combine to break up the population into small groups and keep them in an isolated and quarrelsome state. Chronic quarreling is not only the product of mere lack of contact. It is due to many causes, among which is a union of the habit of migration and divergent tribal speech. Every tribe has its own peculiar words in addition to those common to the group of tribes to which it be- longs. Moreover each group of a tribe has its distinctive words. I have seen and used carefully prepared vocabularies—no two of which are alike throughout. They serve for communication with only a limited number of families. These peculiarities increase as experiences vary and new situations call for additions to or changes in their vocabularies, and when migrating tribes meet their speech may be so unlike as to make communication difficult. 44 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU Thus arise suspicion, misunderstanding, plunder, and chronic war. Had they been a united people their defense of their rough coun- try might have been successful. The tribes have been divided and now and again, to get firearms and ammunition with which to raid a neighbor, a tribe has joined its fortunes to those of vagrant rub- ber pickers only to find in time that its women were debased, its members decimated by strange and deadly diseases, and its old morality undermined by an insatiable desire for strong drink.* The Indian loses whether with the white or against him. The forest Indian is held by his environment no less strongly than the plateau Indian. We hear much about the restriction of the plateau dweller to the cool zone in which the llama may live. As a matter of fact he lives far below the cool zone, where he no longer depends upon the llama but rather upon the mule for trans- port. The limits of his range correspond to the limits of the grasslands in the dry valley pockets already described (p. 42), or on the drier mountain slopes below the zone of heaviest rainfall (Fig. 54). It is this distribution that brought him into such in- timate contact with the forest Indian. The old and dilapidated coca terraces of the Quechuas above the Yanatili almost overlook the forest patches where the Machigangas for centuries built their rude huts. A good deal has been written about the attempts of the Incas to extend their rule into this forest zone and about the failure of these attempts on account of the tropical climate. But the forest Indian was held by bonds equally secure. The cold cli- mate of the plateau repelled him as it does today. His haunts are the hot valleys where he need wear only a wild-cotton shirt or where he may go naked altogether. That he raided the lands of the plateau Indian is certain, but he could never displace him. Only along the common borders of their domains, where the climates of two zones merged into each other, could the forest Indian and the plateau Indian seriously dispute each other’s 4Walle states (Le Pérou Economique, Paris, 1907, p. 297) that the Conibos, a tribe of the Ucayali, make annual correrias or raids during the months of July, August, and September, that is during the season of low water. Over seven hundred canoes are said to participate and the captives secured are sold to rubber exploiters, who, indeed, frequently aid in the organization of the raids. THE FOREST INDIANS 45 claims to the land. Here was endless conflict but only feeble trade and only the most minute exchanges of cultural elements. Even had they been as brothers they would have had little in- centive to borrow cultural elements from each other. The forest dweller requires bow and arrow; the plateau dweller requires a hoe. There are fish in the warm river shallows of the forested zone; llamas, vicuia, vizeachas, etc., are a partial source of food supply on the plateau. Coca and potatoes are the chief products of the grassy mountain slopes; yuca, corn, bananas, are the chief vegetable foods grown on the tiny cultivated patches in the forest. The plateau dweller builds a thick-walled hut; the valley dweller a cane shack. So unlike are the two environments that it would be strange if there had been a mixture of racial types and cul- tures. The slight exchanges that were made seem little more than accidental. Even today the Machigangas who live on the highest slopes own a few pigs obtained from Quechuas, but they never eat their flesh; they keep them for pets merely. I saw not a single woolen article among the Indians along the Urubamba whereas Quechuas with woolen clothing were going back and forth regu- larly. Their baubles were of foreign make; likewise their few hoes, likewise their guns. They clear the forest about a wild-cotton tree and spin and weave the cotton fiber into sacks, cords for climbing trees when they wish to chase a monkey, ropes for hauling their canoes, shirts for the married men and women, colored head-bands, and fish nets. The slender strong bamboo is gathered for arrows. The chunta palm, like bone for hardness, supplies them with bows and ar- row heads. The brilliant red and yellow feathers of forest birds, also monkey bones and teeth, are their natural ornaments. Their life is absolutely distinct from that of their Quechua neighbors. Little wonder that for centuries forest and plateau Indians have been enemies and that their cultures are so distinct, for their environment everywhere calls for unlike modes of existence and distinct cultural development. CHAPTER V THE COUNTRY OF THE SHEPHERDS Tue lofty mountain zones of Peru, the high bordering valleys, and the belts of rolling plateau between are occupied by tribes of shepherds. In that cold, inhospitable region at the top of the country are the highest permanent habitations in the world— 17,100 feet (5,210 m.)—the loftiest pastures, the greatest degree of adaptation to combined altitude and frost. It is here only a step from Greenland to Arcady. Nevertheless it is Greenland that has the people. Why do they shun Arcady? To the traveler from the highlands the fertile valleys between 5,000 and 8,000 feet (1,500 to 2,500 m.) seem like the abode of friendly spirits to whose charm the highland dweller must yield. Every pack-train from valley to highland carries luxury in the form of fruit, coca, cacao, and sugar. One would think that every importation of valley products would be followed by a wave of migration from highland to val- ley. On the contrary the highland people have clung to their lofty pastures for unnumbered centuries. Until the Conquest the last outposts of the Incas toward the east were the grassy ridges that terminate a few thousand feet below the timber line. In this natural grouping of the people where does choice or blind prejudice or instinct leave off? Where does necessity be- gin? There are answers to most of these questions to be found in the broad field of geographic comparison. But before we begin comparisons we must study the individual facts upon which they rest. These facts are of almost every conceivable variety. They range in importance from a humble shepherd’s stone corral on a mountain slope to a thickly settled mountain basin. Their in- terpretation is to be sought now in the soil of rich playa lands, now in the fixed climatic zones and rugged relief of deeply dis- sected, lofty highlands in the tropics. Some of the controlling factors are historical, others economic; still other factors have 46 THE COUNTRY OF THE SHEPHERDS 47 exerted their influence through obscure psychologic channels al- most impossible to trace. The why of man’s distribution over the earth is one of the most complicated problems in natural science, and the solution of it is the chief problem of the modern geographer. At first sight the mountain people of the Peruvian Andes seem to be uniform in character and in mode of life. The traveler’s first impression is that the same stone-walled, straw-thatched type of hut is to be found everywhere, the same semi-nomadice life, the same degrees of poverty and filth. Yet after a little study the diversity of their lives is seen to be, if not a dominating fact, at least one of surprising importance. Side by side with this di- versity there runs a corresponding diversity of relations to their physical environment. Nowhere else on the earth are greater phys- ical contrasts compressed within such small spaces. If, there- fore, we accept the fundamental theory of geography that there is a general, necessary, varied, and complex relation between man and the earth, that theory ought here to find a really vast num- ber of illustrations. A glance at the accompanying figures dis- closes the wide range of relief in the Peruvian Andes. The cor- responding range in climate and in life therefore furnishes an am- ple field for the application of the laws of human distribution. In analyzing the facts of distribution we shall do well to begin with the causes and effects of migration. Primitive man is in no small degree a wanderer. His small resources often require him to explore large tracts. As population increases the food quest becomes more intense, and thus there come about repeated emigra- tions which increase the food supply, extend its variety, and draw the pioneers at last into contact with neighboring groups. The farther back we go in the history of the race the clearer it becomes that migrations lie at the root of much of human development. The raid for plunder, women, food, beasts, is a persistent feature of the life of those primitive men who live on the border of un- like regions. The shepherd of the highland and the forest hunter of the plains perforce range over vast tracts, and each brings back to the 48 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU home group news that confirms the tribal choice of habitation or sets it in motion toward a more desirable place. Superstitions may lead to flight akin to migration. Epidemics may be inter- preted as the work of a malignant spirit from which men must flee. War may drive a defeated group into the fastnesses of a moun- tain forest where pursuit by stream or trail weakens the pursuer and confines his action, thereby limiting his power. Floods may come and destroy the cultivated spots. Want or mere desire in a hundred forms may lead to movement. Even among forest tribes long stationary the facile canoe and the light household necessities may easily enable trivial causes to develop the spirit of restlessness. Pressure of population is a powerful but not a general cause of movement. It may affect the settled groups of the desert oases, or the dense population of fer- tile plains that is rooted in the soil. On the other hand mere whims may start a nomadic group toward a new goal. -Often the goal is elusive and the tribe turns back to the old haunts or per- ishes in the shock of unexpected conflict. In the case of both primitive societies and those of a higher order the causes and the results of migration are often contra- dictory. These will depend on the state of civilization and the ex- tremes of circumstance. When the desert blooms the farmer of the Piura Valley in northwestern Peru turns shepherd and drives his flocks of sheep and goats out into the short-lived pastures of the great pampa on the west. In dry years he sends them eastward into the mountains. The forest Indian of the lower Uru- bamba is a fisherman while the river is low and lives in a reed hut beside his cultivated patch of cane and yuca. When the floods come he is driven to the higher ground in the hills where he has another cultivated patch of land and a rude shelter. To be sure, these are seasonal migrations, yet through them the country be- comes better known to each new generation of men. And each generation supplies its pioneers, who drift into the remoter places where population is scarce or altogether wanting. Dry years and extremely dry years may have opposite effects. When moderate dryness prevails the results may be endurable. ‘r0% ‘Sta ‘dem orydeasodo, oy} 008 uote] 10g “GZ “Sty UL UMOYS 01e pozeNys st ynY oy} Yor UL UoIder oY} Jo Sdrysuoryejer orydeasoes [eroues oy, ‘Aoamns [eyuouMazsur Aq pouruttojop (w OTZ‘G) 90°} OOT‘LT Jo epnyyn,y “p[toma OY} Ul YSOYSTY 9Y4 oq 07 PoAdoT[oq SI I PUB ‘Niog UI UOTZeIIqeYy yUoUBUIEd ysoYSTY oY} ST ‘poyozeyy-ssvad “QnYy ou0Is sIYT—PFZ ‘DIT =3 Se as -Z > < aE a Le ek eee ee ‘ om AE Be ra ‘ BE, ae Sees See THE COUNTRY OF THE SHEPHERDS 49 The oases become crowded with men and beasts just when they ean ill afford to support them. The alfalfa meadows become over- stocked, and cattle become lean and almost worthless. But there is at least bare subsistence. By contrast, if extreme and pro- longed drought prevails, some of the people are driven forth to more favored spots. At Vallenar in central Chile some of the workmen in extreme years go up to the nitrate pampa; in wet years they return. When the agents of the nitrate companies hear of hard times in a desert valley they offer employment to the stricken people. It not infrequently happens that when there are droughts in desert Chile there are abundant rains in Argentina on the other side of the Cordillera. There has therefore been for many generations an irregular and slight, though definite, shift- ing of population from one side of the mountains to the other as periods of drought and periods of rain alternated in the two regions. Some think there is satisfactory evidence to prove that a number of the great Mongolian emigrations took place in wet years when pasture was abundant and when the pastoral nomad found it easy to travel. On the other hand it has been urged that the cause of many emigrations was prolonged periods of drought when the choice lay between starvation and flight. It is evident from the foregoing that both views may be correct in spite of the fact that identical effects are attributed to opposite causes. It is still an open question whether security or insecurity is more favorable for the broad distribution of the Peruvian Indians of the mountain zone which forms the subject of this chapter. Cer- tainly both tend to make the remoter places better known. Tradi- tion has it that, in the days of intertribal conflict before the Con- quest, fugitives fled into the high mountain pastures and lived in hidden places and in caves. Life was insecure and relief was sought in flight. On the other hand peace has brought security to life. The trails are now safe. A shepherd may drive his flock anywhere. He no longer has any one to fear in his search for new pastures. It would perhaps be safe to conclude that there is equally broad distribution of men in the mountain pastures in time of peace and in time of war. There is, however, a difference in 50 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU A7LOETY VALLEYS WATERED By, PERENNIAL'STREAMS ~ H /. GPL, relatio e Ww 5 location, see Fig. 20. It should be remembered that the orientation of these diagrams is generalized. By reference to Fig. 20 it will be seen that portions of the some erest of the Maritime Cordillera run east and west and others north and south. The ame is true of the Cordillera Vilcapampa, Fig. 36. the kind of distribution. In time of peace the individual is safe anywhere; in time of unrest he is safe only when isolated and vir- tually concealed. By contrast, the group living near the trails is THE COUNTRY OF THE SHEPHERDS 51 scattered by plundering bands and war parties. The remote and isolated group may successfully oppose the smaller band and the individuals that might reach the remoter regions. The fugitive group would have nothing to fear from large bands, for the limited food supply would inevitably cause these to disintegrate upon leaving the main routes of travel. Probably the fullest ex- ploration of the mountain pastures has resulted from the alterna- tion of peace and war. The opposite conditions which these estab- lish foster both kinds of distribution; hence both the remote group life encouraged by war and the individual’s lack of restraint in Note on regional diagrams.—For the sake of clearness I have classified the accom- panying facts of human distribution in the country of the shepherds and represented them graphically in “regional” diagrams, Figs. 17, 25, 26, 32, 34, 36, 42, 65. These diagrams are constructed on the principle of dominant control. Each brings out the factors of greatest importance in the distribution of the people in a given region. Furthermore, the facts are compressed within the limits of a small rectangle. This com- pression, though great, respects all essential relations. For example, every location on these diagrams has a concrete illustration but the accidental relations of the field have been omitted; the essential relations are preserved. Each diagram is, therefore, a kind of generalized type map. It bears somewhat the same relation to the facts of human geography that a block diagram does to physiography. The darkest shading represents steep snow-covered country; the next lower grade represents rough but snow-iree country; the lightest shading represents moderate relief; unshaded parts represent plain or plateau. Small circles represent forest or woodland; small open- spaced dots, grassland. Fine alluvium is represented by small closely spaced dots; coarse alluvium by large closely spaced dots. To take an illustration. In Figure 32 we have the Apurimac region near Pasaje (see location map, Fig. 20). At the lower edge of the rectangle is a snow-capped outlier of the Cordillera Vilcapampa. The belt of rugged country represents the lofty, steep, exposed, and largely inaccessible ridges at the mid-elevations of the mountains below the glaciated slopes at the heads of tributary valleys. The villages in the belt of pasture might well be Incahuasi and Corralpata. The floors of the large canyons on either hand are bordered by extensive alluvial fans. The river courses are sketched in a diagrammatic way only, but a map would not be different in its general disposition. Each location is justified by a real place with the same essential features and relations. In making the change there has been no alteration of the general relation of the alluvial lands to each other or to the highland. By suppressing unnecessary details there is produced a diagram whose essentials have simple and clear relations. When such a regional diagram is amplified by photographs of real conditions it becomes a sort of generalized picture of a large group of geographic facts. One could very well extend the method to the whole of South America. It would be a real service to geography to draw up a set of, say, twelve to fifteen regional diagrams, still further generalized, for the whole of the continent. As a broad classification they would serve both the specialist and the general student. As the basis for a regional map of South America they would be invaluable if worked out in sufficient detail and constructed on the indispensable basis of field studies. 52 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU time of peace are probably in large part responsible for the pres- ent widespread occupation of the Peruvian mountains. The loftiest habitation in the world (Fig. 24) is in Peru. Be- tween Antabamba and Cotahuasi occur the highest passes in the Maritime Cordillera. We crossed at 17,400 feet (5,300 m.), and three hundred feet lower is the last outpost of the Indian shep- herds. The snowline, very steeply canted away from the sun, is between 17,200 and 17,600 feet (5,240 to 5,360 m.). At frequent intervals during the three months of winter, snowfalls during the night and terrific hailstorms in the late afternoon drive both shep- herds and flocks to the shelter of leeward slopes or steep canyon walls. At our six camps, between 16,000 and 17,200 feet (4,876 and 5,240 m.), in September, 1911, the minimum temperature ranged from 4° to 20° F. The thatched stone hut that we passed at 17,100 feet and that enjoys the distinction of being the highest in the world was in other respects the same as the thousands of others in the same region. It sheltered a family of five. As we . passed, three rosy-cheeked children almost as fat as the sheep about them were sitting on the ground in a corner of the corral playing with balls of wool. Hundreds of alpacas and sheep grazed on the hill slopes and valley floor, and their tracks showed plainly that they were frequently driven up to the snowline in those valleys where a trickle of water supported a band of pasture. Less than a hundred feet below them were other huts and flocks. Here we have the limits of altitude and the limits of resources. The intervalley spaces do not support grass. Some of them are quite bare, others are covered with mosses. It is too high for even the tola bush—that pioneer of Alpine vegetation in the Andes. The distance’? to Cotahuasi is 75 miles (120 km.), to Antabamba ' 50 miles (80 km.). Thence wool must be shipped by pack-train to the railroad in the one case 250 miles (400 km.) to Arequipa, in the other case 200 miles (320 km.) to Cuzco. Even the potatoes and barley, which must be imported, come from valleys several days’ journey away. The question naturally arises why these peo- ple live on the rim of the world. Did they seek out these neglected 1 Distances are not taken from the map but from the trail. + THE COUNTRY OF THE SHEPHERDS 53 pastures, or were they driven to them? Do they live here by choice or of necessity? The answer to these questions introduces two other geographic factors of prime importance, the one phys- ical, the other economic. The main tracts of lofty pasture above Antabamba cover moun- tain slopes and valley floor alike, but the moist valley floors supply the best grazing. Moreover, the main valleys have been inten- sively glaciated. Hence, though their sides are steep walls, their floors are broad and flat. Marshy tracts, periodically flooded, are scattered throughout, and here and there are overdeepened por- tions where lakes have gathered. There is a thick carpet of grass, also numerous huts and corrals, and many flocks. At the upper edge of the main zone of pasture the grasses become thin and with increasing altitude give out altogether except along the moist val- ley floors or on shoulders where there is seepage. If the streams head in dry mountain slopes without snow the grassy bands of the valley floor terminate at moderate elevations. If the streams have their sources in snowfields or glaciers there is a more uniform run-off, and a ribbon of pasture may extend to the snowline. To the latter class belong the pastures that support these remote people. In the case of the Maritime Andes the great elevation of the snowline is also a factor. If, in Figure 25, we think of the snow- line as at the upper level of the main zone of pasture then we should have the conditions shown in Figure 36, where the limit of general, not local, occupation is the snowline, as in the Cordillera Vileapampa and between Chuquibambilla and Antabamba. A third factor is the character of the soil. Large amounts of voleanic ash and lapilli were thrown out in the late stages of vol- canic eruption in which the present cones of the Maritime Andes were formed. The coarse texture of these deposits allows the ready escape of rainwater. The combination of extreme aridity and great elevation results in a double restraint upon vegetation. Outside of the moist valley floors, with their film of ground moraine on whose surface plants find a more congenial soil, there is an extremely small amount of pasture. Here are the natural 54 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU grazing grounds of the fleet vicuia. They occur in hundreds, and so remote and little disturbed are they that near the main pass one may count them by the score. As we rode by, many of them only stared at us without taking the trouble to get beyond rifle shot. It is not difficult to believe that the Indians easily shoot great numbers in remote valleys that have not. been hunted for years. 4) The extreme conditions of life existing on these lofty plateaus are well shown by the readiness with which even the hardy shep- herds avail themselves of shelter. Wherever deep valleys bring a milder climate within reach of the pastures the latter are unpopu- lated for miles on either side. The sixty-mile stretch between Chuquibamba and Salamanca is without even a single hut, though there are pastures superior to the ones occupied by those loftiest huts of all. Likewise there are no permanent homes between Sala- manea and Cotahuasi, though the shepherds migrate across the belt in the milder season of rain. Eastward and northward to- ward the crest of the Maritime Cordillera there are no huts within a day’s journey of the Cotahuasi canyon. Then there is a group of a dozen just under the crest of the secondary range that parallels the main chain of volcanoes. Thence northward there are a number of scattered huts between 15,500 and 16,500 feet (4,700 and 5,000 m.), until we reach the highest habitations of all at 17,100 feet (5,210 m.). The unpopulated belts of lava plateau bordering the entrenched valleys are, however, as distinctly ‘‘sustenance’’ spaces, to use Penck’s term, as the irrigated and fertile alluvial fans in the bot- tom of the valley. This is well shown when the rains come and flocks of llamas and sheep are driven forth from the valleys to the best pastures. It is equally well shown by the distribution of the shepherds’ homes. These are not down on the warm canyon floor, separated by a half-day’s journey from the grazing. They are in the intrenched tributary valleys of Figure 26 or just within the rim of the canyon. It is not shelter from the cold but from the wind that chiefly determines their location. They are also kept near the rim of the canyon by the pressure of the farming popu- THE COUNTRY OF THE SHEPHERDS 55 lation from below. Every hundred feet of descent from the arid plateau (Fig. 29) increases the water supply. Springs increase in number and size; likewise belts of seepage make their appear- ance. The gradients in many places diminish, and flattish spurs and shoulders interrupt the generally steep descents of the canyon - LOFTY LAVA, PLATEAU 7 eS ; ea: wyatt NY. US Se THIN rASTURES EN UI : NA Sane ee . RANTS ; onus WY UAL Mey Y) y Fie. 26—Regional diagram to show the physical relations in the lava plateau of the Maritime Cordillera west of the continental divide. For location, see Fig. 20. Trails lead up the intrenched tributaries. If the irrigated bench (lower right corner) is large, a town will be located on it. Shepherds’ huts are scattered about the edge of the girdle of spurs. There is also a string of huts in the deep sheltered head of each tributary. See also Fig. 29 for conditions on the valley or canyon floor. \ wall. Hvery change of this sort has a real value to the farmer and means an enhanced price beyond the ability of the poor shepherd to pay. If you ask a wealthy hacendado on the valley floor (Fig. 29), who it is that live in the huts above him, he will invariably say ‘“‘los Indios,’’ with a shrug meant to convey the idea of poverty and worthlessness. Sometimes it is ‘‘los Indios pobres,’’ or merely ‘‘los pobres.’’ Thus there is a vertical stratification of 56 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU society corresponding to the superimposed strata of climate and land. At Salamanca (Fig. 62) I saw this admirably displayed under circumstances of unusual interest. The floor and slopes of the valley are more completely terraced than in any other valley I know of. In the photograph, Fig. 30, which shows at least 2,500 feet of descent near the town, one cannot find a single patch of sur- face that is not under cultivation. The valley is simply filled with people to the limit of its capacity. Practically all are Indians, but with many grades of wealth and importance. When we rode out of the valley before daybreak, one September morning in 1911, there was a dead calm, and each step upward carried us into a colder stratum of air. At sunrise we had reached a point about 2,000 feet above the town, or 14,500 feet (4,420 m.) above sea level. We stood on the frost line. On the opposite wall of the valley the line was as clearly marked out as if it had been an irrigating canal. The light was so fully reflected from the millions of frost crystals above it that both the mountainside and the valley slopes were sparkling like a ruffled lake at sunrise. Below the frost line the slopes were dark or covered with yellow barley and wheat stubble or green alfalfa. It happened that the frost line was near the line of division between corn and potato cultivation and also near the line separat- ing the steep rough upper lands from the cultivable lower lands. Not a habitation was in sight above us, except a few scattered miserable huts near broken terraces, gullied by wet-weather streams and grown up to weeds and brush. Below us were well- cultivated fields, and the stock was kept in bounds by stone fences and corrals; above, the half-wild burros and mules roamed about everywhere, and only the sheep and llamas were in rude enclo- sures. Thus in a half hour we passed the frontier between the agricultural folk below the frost line and the shepherd folk above it. In a few spots the line followed an irregular course, as where flatter lands were developed at unusual elevations or where air drainage altered the normal temperature. And at one place the Fic, 27—Terraced valley slopes at Huaynacotas, Cotahuasi Valley, Peru. Eleva- tion 11,500 feet (3,500 m.). . Fig. 28—The highly cultivated and thoroughly terraced floor of the Ollantaytambo Valley at Ollantaytambo. This is a tributary of the Urubamba; elevation, 11,000 feet. Fic. 29—Cotahuasi on the floor of the Cotahuasi canyon. The even skyline of the background is on a rather even-topped lava plateau. ‘lhe terrace on the left of the town is formed on limestone, which is overlain by lava flows. A thick deposit of ter- raced alluvium may be seen on the valley floor, and it is on one of the lower terraces that the city of Cotahuasi stands. The higher terraces are in many cases too dry for cultivation. The canyon is nearly 7,000 feet (2,130 m.) deep and has been cut through one hundred principal lava flows. THE COUNTRY OF THE SHEPHERDS 57 frost actually stood on the young corn, which led us to speculate on the possibility of securing from Salamanca a variety of maize that is more nearly resistant to light frosts than any now grown in the United States. In the endless and largely unconscious ex- perimentation of these folk perched on the valley walls a result may have been achieved ahead of that yet reached by our pro- fessional experimenters. Certain it is that nowhere else in the world has the potato been grown under such severe climatic con- ditions as in its native land of Peru and Bolivia. The hardiest varieties lack many qualities that we prize. They are small and bitter. But at least they will grow where all except very few cultivated plants fail, and they are edible. Could they not be im- ported into Canada to push still farther northward the limits of cultivation? Potatoes are now grown at Forts Good Hope and McPherson in the lower Mackenzie basin. Would not the hardiest Peruvian varieties grow at least as far north as the continental timber line? I believe they could be grown still farther north. They will endure repeated frosts. They need scarcely any cultiva- tion. Prepared in the Peruvian manner, as chuiio, they could be kept all winter. Being light, the meal derived from them could be easily packed by hunters and prospectors. An Indian will carry in a pouch enough to last him a week. Why not use it north of the continental limit of other cultivated plants since it is the pioneer above the frost line on the Peruvian mountains? The relation between farmer and shepherd or herdsman grows more complex where deeper valleys interrupt the highlands and mountains. The accompanying sketch, Fig. 32, represents typical relations, though based chiefly on the Apurimac canyon and its surroundings near Pasaje. First there is the snow-clad region at the top of the country. Below it are grassy slopes, the homes of mountain shepherds, or rugged mountain country unsuited for grazing. Still lower there is woodland, in patches chiefly, but with a few large continuous tracts. The shady sides of the ravines and the mountains have the most moisture, hence bear the densest growths. Finally, the high country terminates in a second belt of pasture below the woodland. THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU 58 Whenever streams descend from the snow or woodland coun- try there is water for the stock above and for irrigation on the alluvial fan below. But the spur ends dropping off abruptly sev- NY : < DRY GRASS Pir Z, 4 SMOOTH-TOPPE SV: ofo ° a Zz < mi ray aN. fs) = BELT’: OF 2 Fie. 32—Regional diagram representing the deep canyoned country west of the Eastern Cordillera in the region of the Apurimac. For photograph see Fig. 94. For and 3 corre- , 2 J Numbers 1 cription see note on regional diagrams, p. 51. spond in position to the same numbers in Fig. 33. Ss further de eral thousand feet have a limited area and no running streams, and the ground water is hundreds of feet down. There is grass for stock, but there is no water. In some places the stock is driven ‘Ao[BA-UMOp MOjq ‘B[VULD [VIOYTAIL YSno1yy Pusosep 8491107 4vy} SPUIM QYStU 943 Woy pertozjeys ‘odo[s 1ey}1e uo 4]INq a1ayM IO IISA a1B SyyMord AYSNq d.10T[ soavjd Mey & oARS ale s[eItod ouo}S snp, “vUerquIeyT pues vi[IquieqmbnyD S90VL10} JIM Pd2toA0o Jou st yorym Ydeasojoyd oyy yo yxed ou uaaA\joq Ao][vA ULe}UNOU 91} UT sernqysed ourdjyY—Té¢ “OL SI Ooyy, “vouRUIY[Lg Ivou Sodo]s [[I|{ peviie[—Oog “Ol : fi 5 ; & - ’ z | 4 4 th i " - i) ; j : ‘ pyar Dt iio rs ’ O. 6, L, a Ay j 2 * id 4 - 1 bce: THE COUNTRY OF THE SHEPHERDS 59 back and forth every few days. In a few places water is brought to the stock by canal from the woodland streams above, as at Corralpata.? In the same way a canal brings water to Pasaje hacienda from a woodland strip many miles to the west. The little canal in the figure is almost a toy construction a few inches VALLEY ZONE MOUNTAIN ZONE SNOW LINE—~—= GH GRASSY VALLI WOODLAND eee Limit OF FORMER——— = GLACIATION SHOULDER ON VALLEY WAI “TOPOGRAPHIC UNCONFORMITY” ARID VALLEY FLOOR IRRIGATION, SUGAR ESTATES Fie. 33—Valley climates of the canyoned region shown in Fig. 32. wide and deep and conveying only a trickle of water, Yet on it depends the settlement at the spur end, and if it were cut the peo- ple would have to repair it immediately or establish new homes. The canal and the pasture are possible because the slopes are moderate. They were formed in an earlier cycle of erosion when the land was lower. They are hung midway between the rough mountain slopes above and the steep canyon walls below (Fig. 32). Their smooth descents and gentle profiles are in very pleasing contrast to the rugged scenery about them. The trails follow them easily. Where the slopes are flattest, farmers have settled and produce good crops of corn, vegetables, and barley. Some farm- ers have even developed three- and four-story farms. On an al- luvial fan in the main valley they raise sugar cane and tropical and subtropical fruits; on the flat upper slopes they produce corn; in the moister soil near the edge of the woodland are fields of mountain potatoes; and the upper pastures maintain flocks of ? Compare with Raimondi’s description of Quiches on the left bank of the Marafion at an elevation of 9,885 feet (3,013 m.): “the few small springs scarcely suffice for the little patches of alfalfa and other sowings have to depend on the precarious rains. . . . Every drop of water is carefully guarded and from each spring a series of well-like basins descending in staircase fashion make the most of the secant paeBi {El Departamento de Ancachs, Lima, 1873.) 60 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU sheep. In one district this change takes place in a distance that may be covered in five hours. Generally it is at least a full and hard day’s journey from one end of the series to the other. Wherever these features are closely associated they tend to be controlled by the planter in some deep valley thereabouts. Where they are widely scattered the people are independent, small groups living in places nearly inaccessible. Legally they are all under the control of the owners of princely tracts that take in the whole country, but the remote groups are left almost wholly to themselves. In most cases they are supposed to sell their few commercial products to the hacendado who nominally owns their land, but the administration of this arrangement is left largely to chance. The shepherds and small farmers near the plantation are more dependent upon the planter for supplies, and also their wants are more varied and numerous. Hence they pay for their better location in free labor and in produce sold at a discount. So deep are some of the main canyons, like the Apurimac and the Cotahuasi, that their floors are arid or semi-arid. The fortunes of Pasaje are tied to a narrow canal from the moist woodland and a tiny brook from a hollow in the valley wall. Where the water has thus been brought down to the arable soil of the fans there are rich plantations and farms. Elsewhere, however, the floor is quite dry and uncultivated. In small spots here and there is a little seepage, or a few springs, or a mere thread of water that will not support a plantation, wherefore there have come into existence the valley herdsmen and shepherds. Their intimate knowledge of the moist places is their capital, quite as much as are the cattle and sheep they own. In a sense their lands are the neglected crumbs from the rich man’s table. So we find the shepherd from the hills invading the valleys just as the valley farmer has invaded the country of the shepherd. The basin type of topography calls into existence a set of rela- tions quite distinct from either of those we have just described. Figure 34 represents the main facts. The rich and comparatively flat floor of the basin supports most of the people. The alluvial fans tributary thereto are composed of fine material on their outer THE COUNTRY OF THE SHEPHERDS 61 HIGHLAND “ZIONE “OF “CONTINUOUS “PASTU SOS “Vie yj “I Q My ie Wh. , Fic. 34—Regional diagram to show the typical physical conditions and relations in an intermont basin in the Peruvian Andes. The Cuzco basin (see Fig. 37) is an actual illustration; it should, however, be emphasized that the diagram is not a “map” of that basin, for whilst conditions there have been utilized as a basis, the generalization has been extended to illustrate many basins. margin and of coarse stony waste at their heads. Hence the val- ley farms also extend over the edges of the fans, while only pas- ture or dense chaparral occupies the upper portions. Finally 62 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU there is the steep margin of the basin where the broad and moder- ate slopes of the highland break down to the floor of the basin. If a given basin lies at an elevation exceeding 14,000 feet (4,270 m.), there will be no cultivation, only pasture. If at 10,000 or 11,000 feet (3,000 or 3,350 m.), there will be grain fields below ZONE OF STORED PEA UN ZONE OF CULTIVATION ZONE OF MOUNTAIN PASTURES SOURCES OF BASIN STREAM ‘-LIMIT OF IRRIGATION AND--! | INTENSIVE CULTIVATION Te CULTIVABLE aie IN VALLEY _- phe usr oF POTATO cuLTWATION z PORTANT BECAUSE IT FALLS WITHIN THE LIMITS OF AGRICULTURE 8 000- —ORANGE AND BANANA 6000' —-—--——~—-———— Fic. 35—Climatiec cross-section showing the location of various zones of cultivation and pasture in a typical intermont basin in the Peruvian Andes. The thickness of the dark symbols on the right is proportional to the amount of each staple that is produced at the corresponding elevation. See also the regional diagram Fig. 34. and potato fields above (Figs. 34 and 35). If still lower, fruit will come in and finally sugar cane and many other. subtropical prod- ucts, as at Abancay. Much will also depend upon the amount of available water and the extent of the pasture land. Thus the densely populated Cuzco basin has a vast mountain territory tributary to it and is itself within the limits of barley and wheat cultivation. Furthermore there are a number of smaller basins, like the Anta basin on the north, which are dependent upon its better markets and transportation facilities. A dominance of this kind is self-stimulating and at last is out of all proportion to the original differences of nature. Cuzco has also profited as the gate- way to the great northeastern valley region of the Urubamba and its big tributaries. All of the varied products of the subtropical valleys find their immediate market at Cuzco. The effect of this natural conspiracy of conditions has been to place the historic city of Cuzco in a position of extraordinary im- portance. Hundreds of years before the Spanish Conquest it was a center of far-reaching influence, the home of the powerful Inca kings. From it the strong arm of authority and conquest was ex- THE COUNTRY OF THE SHEPHERDS 63 tended; to it came tribute of grain, wool, and gold. To one ac- © customed to look at such great consequences as having at least some ultimate connection with the earth, the situation of Cuzco would be expected to have some unique features. With the glori- ous past of that city in mind, no one can climb to the surround- ing heights and look down upon the fertile mountain-rimmed plain as at an ordinary sight (Fig. 37). The secret of those great con- quests lies not only in mind but in matter. If the rise of the Incas to power was not related to the topography and climate of the Cuzco basin, at least it is certain that without so broad and noble a stage the scenes would have been enacted on a far different scale. The first Inca king and the Spanish after the Incas found here no mobile nomadic tribes melting away at the first touch, no savages hiding in forest fastnesses, but a well-rooted agricultural race in whose center a large city had grown up. Without a city and a fertile tributary plain no strong system of government could be maintained or could even arise. It is a great advantage in rul- ing to have subjects that cannot move. The agricultural Indians of the Andean valleys and basins, in contrast to the mobile shep- herd, are as fixed as the soil from which they draw their life. The full occupation of the pasture lands about the Cuzco basin is in direct relation to the advantages we have already enumer- ated. Every part of the region feels the pressure of population. Nowhere else in the Peruvian Andes are the limits between cultiva- tion and grazing more definitely drawn than here. Moreover, there is today a marked difference between the types that inhabit highland and basin. The basin Indian is either a debauched city dweller or, as generally, a relatively alert farmer. The shepherds are exceedingly ignorant and live for the most part in a manner almost as primitive as at the time of the Conquest. They are shy and suspicious. Many of them prefer a life of isolation and rarely go down to the town. They live on the fringe of culture. The new elements of their life have come to them solely by accident and by what might be called a process of ethnic seepage. The slight advances that have been made do not happen by design, they 64 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU merely happen. Put the highland shepherd in the basin and he would starve in competition with the basin type. Undoubtedly he would live in the basin if he could. He has not been driven out of the basin; he is kept out. And thus it is around the border of the Abancay basin and others like it. Only, the Abancay basin is lower and more varied as to resources. The Indian is here in competition with the capi- talistic white planter. He lives on the land by sufferance alone. Farther up the slopes are the farms of the Indians and above them are the pastures of the ignorant shepherds. Whereas the Indian farmer who raises potatoes clings chiefly to the edge of the Cuzco basin where lie the most undesirable agricultural lands, the Indian farmers of Abancay live on broad rolling slopes like those near the pass northward toward Huancarama. They are unusually prosperous, with fields so well cultivated and fenced, so clean and productive, that they remind one somewhat of the beautiful rolling prairies of Iowa. It remains to consider the special topographic features of the mountain environments we are discussing, in the Vilcapampa region on the eastern border of the Andes (Fig. 36). The Cordil- lera Vileapampa is snow-crested, containing a number of fine white peaks like Salcantay, Soray, and Soiroccocha (Fig. 140). There are many small glaciers and a few that are several miles long. There was here in glacial times a much larger system of glaciers, which lived long enough to work great changes in the topography. The floors of the glaciated valleys were smoothed and broadened and their gradients flattened (Figs. 137 and 190).. The side walls were steepened and precipitous cirques were formed at the valley heads. Also, there were built across the val- leys a number of stony morainic ridges. With all these changes there was, however, but little effect upon the main masses of the big intervalley spurs. They remain as before—bold, wind-swept, broken, and nearly inaccessible. The work of the glaciers aids the mountain people. The stony moraines afford them handy sizable building material for their stone huts and their numerous corrals. The thick tufts of grass THE COUNTRY OF THE SHEPHERDS 65 in the marshy spots in the overdeepened parts of the valleys fur- nish them with grass for their thatched roofs. And, most im- 66 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU portant of all, the flat valley floors have the best pasture in the whole mountain region. There is plenty of water. There is seclu- sion, and, if a fence be built from one valley wall to another as can be done with little labor, an entire section of the valley may be inclosed. Fic. 52. Fie. 51—Robledo’s mountain-side trail in the Urubamba Valley below Rosalina. Fic. 52—An epiphyte partly supported by a dead host at Rosalina, elevation 2,000 feet. The epiphyte bears a striking resemblance to a horned beast whose arched back, tightly clasped fingers, and small eyes give it a peculiarly malignant and life-like expression. Fie. 53A. HIG, Dob: Fic. 53A—The smooth grassy slopes at the junction of the Yanatili (left) and Urubamba (right) rivers near Pabellon. Fie. 53B—Distribution of vegetation in the Urubamba Valley near Torontoy. The patches of timber in the background occupy the shady sides of the spurs; the sunny slopes are grass-covered; the valley floor is filled with thickets and patches of wood- land but not true forest. THE BORDER VALLEYS OF THE EASTERN ANDES The one is forested, the other grass-cov- ered. Slopes that receive the noon and afternoon sun the greater part of the year are hottest and therefore driest. For places in 11° south latitude the sun is well to the north six months of the year, nearly overhead for about two months, and to the south four months. Northwesterly as- pects are therefore driest and warmest, hence also grass-covered. In many places the line between grass and forest is de- veloped so sharply that it seems to be the artificial edge of a cut-over tract. This is true especially if the relief is steep and the hill or ridge-crests sharp.® At Santa Ana this feature is developed in an amazingly clear manner, and it is also combined with the dry timber line and with productivity in a way I have never seen equaled elsewhere. The diagram will explain the relation. It will be seen that the front range of the mountains is high enough to shut off a great deal of rainfall. The lower hills and ridges just within the front range are relatively dry. The deep valleys are much drier. Each broad ex- pansion of a deep valley is therefore a dry pocket. Into it the sun pours even when ® Marcoy who traveled in Peru in the middle of the last century was greatly impressed by the sympathetic changes of aspect and topography and vegetation in the eastern valleys. He thus describes a sudden change of scene in the Occobamba valley: “. . the trees had dis- appeared, the birds had taken wing, and great sandy spaces, covered with the latest deposits of the river, al- ternated with stretches of yellow grass and masses of rock half-buried in the ground.” (Travels in South America, translated by Elihu Rich, 2 vols. New York, 1875, Vol. 1, p. 326.) jpianee é 3 = eee OUTLIERS OF THE ANDES SANTA ANA VALLEY FRONT RANGES OF THE ANDES LOWER VALLEY OF THE URUBAMBA CORDILLERA VILCAPAMPA FEET OWER LIMIT OF PERMANENT SNOW-15,000 MOUNTAIN PASTURES IRRIGATED SUGAR AND CACAO PLANTATIONS a HEAD WATERS~OF-THE=PURUS ———— PREVAILING TRADES ODE MAINIQUE” (ONE-WET, ONE-DRY SEASON TYPE) “PONG: CONTINUOUS AND DENSE TROPICAL FOREST wN--— ORY VALLEY FLOOR Zi PRECIPITAT! FOREST ON SHADY SLOPES ONLY UM sao ZONE OF MAXIM =-==- COLD-TIMBER--LINE~10,500--=> 79 Via. 54—Climatic cross-section from the crest of the Cordillera Vileapampa down the eastern mountain valleys to the tropical plains. 80 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU all the surrounding hills and mountains are wrapped in cloud. The greater number of hours of sunshine hastens the rate of evaporation and still further increases the dryness. Under the spur of much sunlight and of ample irrigation water from the wetter hill slopes, the dry valley pockets produce huge crops of fruit and cane. The influence of the local climate upon tree growth is striking. Tivery few days, even in the relatively dry winter season, clouds gather about the hills and there are local showers. The lower limit of the zone of clouds is sharply marked and at both Santa Ana and Keharati it is strikingly constant in elevation—about five thousand feet above sea level. From the upper mountains the forest descends, with only small patches of glade and prairie. At the lower edge of the zone of cloud it stops abruptly on the warmer and drier slopes that face the afternoon sun and continues on the moister slopes that face the forenoon sun or that slope away from the sun. But this is not the only response the vegetation makes. The forest changes in character as well as in distribution. The forest in the wet zone is dense and the undergrowth luxuriant. In the selective slope forest below the zone of cloud the undergrowth is commonly thin or wanting and the trees grow in rather even-aged stands and by species. Finally, on the valley floor and the tribu- tary fans, there is a distinct growth of scrub with bands of trees along the water courses. Local tracts of coarse soil, or less rain on account of a deep ‘‘hole’’ in a valley surrounded by steeper and higher mountains, or a change in the valley trend that brings it into less free communication with the prevailing winds, may still further increase the dryness and bring in a true xerophytic or drought-resisting vegetation. Cacti are common all through the Santa Ana Valley and below Sahuayaco there is a patch of tree cacti and similar forms several square miles in extent. Still farther down and about half-way between Sahuayaco and Pabel- lon are immense tracts of grass-covered mountain slopes (Fig. 53). These extend beyond Rosalina, the last of them terminating near Abra Tocate (Fig. 15). The sudden interruption is due to a THE BORDER VALLEYS OF THE EASTERN ANDES 81 turn in the valley giving freer access to the up-valley winds that sweep through the pass at Pongo de Mainique. Northward from Abra Tocate (Fig. 55) the forest is prac- tically continuous. The break between the two vegetal regions is emphasized by a corral for cattle and mules, the last outpost of the plateau herdsmen. Not three ater YY Yj miles away, on the oppo- Y, Le Zou FEET HIGH WY site forested slope of the Uj SL SOM valley, is the first of the «wy Z Indian clearings several families of Machi- gangas spend the wet sea- son when the lower river is in flood (Fig. 21). The where erass lands will not yield corn and coca because the soil is too thin, infertile, and dry. The Indian farms are therefore all in the forest and begin al- most at its very edge. Here finally terminates a Y Of “dy Y ty Ye YY yf O 12000 Feet gp tears chai Fie. 55—Map to show the relation of the grasslands of the dry lower portion of the Urubamba Valley (unshaded) to the forested lands at higher elevations (shaded). See Fig. 54 for climatic conditions. Patches and slender tongues of woodland occur below the main “ timber line and patches of grassland above it. long peninsula of grass- covered country. Below this point the heat and humidity rapidly increase; the rains are heavier and more frequent; the country becomes almost uninhabitable for stock; transportation rates double. Here is the undisputed realm of the forest with new kinds of trees and products and a distinctive type of forest-dwelling Indian. > At the next low pass is the skull of an Italian who had mur- dered his companions and stolen a season’s picking of rubber, at- tempting to escape by canoe to the lower Urubamba from the Pongo de Mainique. The Machigangas overtook him in their swiftest dugouts, spent a night with him, and the next morning shot him in the back and returned with their rightful property— 82 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU a harvest of rubber. For more than a decade foreigners have been coming down from the plateau to exploit them. They are an inde- pendent and free tribe and have simple yet correct ideas of right and wrong. ‘Their chief, a man of great strength of character and one of the most likeable men I have known, told me that he placed the skull in the pass to warn away the whites who came to rob honest Indians. The Santa Ana Valley between the Canyon of Torontoy and the heavy forest belt below Rosalina is typical of many of the eastern valleys of Peru, both in its physical setting and in its economic and labor systems. Westward are the outliers of the Vilcapampa range; on the east are the smaller ranges that front the tropical lowlands. Steep valleys descend from the higher country to join the main valley and at the mouth of every tribu- tary is an alluvial fan. If the alluvium is coarse and steeply in- clined there is only pasture on it or a growth of scrub. If fine and broad it is cleared and tilled. The sugar plantations begin at Huadquina and end at Rosalina. Those of Santa Ana and Kcharati are the most productive. It takes eighteen months for the cane to mature in the cooler weather at Huadquina (8,000 feet). Less than a year is required at Santa Ana (3,400 feet). Patches of alluvium or playas, as they are locally called, continue as far as Santo Anato, but they are cultivated only as far as Rosalina. The last large plantation is Pabellon; the largest of all is Echarati. All are irrigated. In the wet months, December to March inclu- sive, there is little or no irrigation. In the four months of the dry season, June to September inclusive, there is frequent irrigation. Since the cane matures in about ten months the harvest seasons fall irregularly with respect to the seasons of rain. Therefore the land is cleared and planted at irregular intervals and labor dis- tributed somewhat through the year. There is however a concen- tration of labor toward the end of the dry season when most of the cane is cut for grinding. The combined freight rate and government tax on coca, sugar, and brandy take a large part of all that the planter can get for his crop. It is 120 miles (190 km.) from Santa Ana to Cuzco and THE BORDER VALLEYS OF THE EASTERN ANDES 83 it takes five days to make the journey. The freight rate on coca and sugar for mule carriage, the only kind to be had, is two cents per pound. The national tax is one cent per pound (0.45 kg.). The coca sells for twenty cents a pound. The cost of production is unknown, but the paid labor takes probably one-half this amount. The planter’s time, capital, and profit must come out of the rest. On brandy there is a national tax of seven cents per liter (0.26 gallon) and a municipal tax of two and a half cents. It costs five cents a liter for transport to Cuzco. The total in taxes and transport is fourteen and a half cents a liter. It sells for twenty cents a liter. Since brandy (aguardiente), cacao (for chocolate), and coca leaves (for cocaine) are the only precious sub- stances which the valleys produce it takes but a moment’s inspec- tion to see how onerous these taxes would be to the planter if labor did not, as usual, pay the penalty. Much of the labor on the plantations is free of cost to the owner and is done by the so-called faena or free Indians. These are Quechuas who have built their cabins on the hill lands of the planters, or on the floors of the smaller valleys. The dis- position of their fields in relation to the valley plantations is full of geographic interest. Hach plantation runs at right angles to the course of the valley. Hacienda Sahuayaco is ten miles (16 km.) in extent down valley and forty miles (64 km.) from end to end across the valley, and it is one of the smaller plantations! It follows that about ten square miles lie on the valley floor and half of this can ultimately be planted. The remaining three hundred and ninety square miles include some mountain country with pos- sible stores of mineral wealth, and a great deal of ‘‘fells’’ coun- try—erassy slopes, graded though steep, excellent for pasture, with here and there patches of arable land. But the hill country ean be cultivated only by the small farmer who supplements his supply of food from cultivated plants like potatoes, corn, and vegetables, by keeping cattle, mules, pigs, and poultry, and by raising coca and fruit. The Indian does not own any of the land he tills. He has the right merely to live on it and to cultivate it. In return he must 84 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU work a certain number of days each year on the owner’s planta- tion. In many cases a small money payment is also made to the planter. The planter prefers labor to money, for hands are scarce throughout the whole eastern valley region. No Indian need work on the planter’s land without receiving pay directly therefor. Hach also gets a small weekly allotment of aguardiente while in the planter’s employ. The scene every Saturday night outside the office of the con- tador (treasurer) of a plantation is a novel one. Several hundred Indians gather in the dark patio in front of the office. Within the circle of the feeble candlelight that reaches only the margin of the crowd one may see a pack of heavy, perspiring faces. Many are pock-marked from smallpox; here and there an eye is missing; only a few are jovial. A name is shouted through the open door and an Indian responds. He pulls off his cap and stands stupid and blinking, while the contador asks: ‘“Faena’’ (free) ? ‘*Si, Sefor,’’ he answers. ‘‘Un sol’’ (one ‘‘sol’’ or fifty cents gold). The assistant hands over the money and the man giyes way to the next one on the list. If he is a laborer in regular and constant employ he receives five soles (two fifty gold) per week. There are interruptions now and then. A ragged, half-drunken man has been leaning against the door post, suspiciously impatient to receive his money. Finally his name is called. ‘‘Waena?’’ asks the contador. ‘‘No, Sefior, cinco (five) soles.’’ At that the field superintendente glances at his time card and speaks up in protest. ‘‘You were the man that failed to show up on Friday and Sat- urday. You were drunk. You should receive nothing.’’ ‘‘No, mi patrén,’’ the man contends, ‘‘I had to visit a sick cousin in the next valley. Oh, he was very sick, Sefor,’’ and he coughs harshly as if he too were on the verge of prostration. The sick cousin, a faena Indian, has been at work in another cane field on the same plantation for two days and now calls out that he is THE BORDER VALLEYS OF THE EASTERN ANDES 85 present and has never had a sick day in his life. Those outside laugh uproariously. The contador throws down two soles and the drunkard is pushed back into the sweating crowd, jostled right and left, and jeered by all his neighbors as he slinks away grumbling. Another Indian seems strangely shy. He scarcely raises his voice above a whisper. He too is a faena Indian. The contador finds fault. ‘Why didn’t you come last month when I sent for you?’’ The Indian fumbles his cap, shuffles his feet, and changes his coca cud from one bulging cheek to the other before he can an- swer. Then huskily: *‘T started, Senor, but my woman overtook me an hour after- ward and said that one of the ewes had dropped a lamb and needed care.’’ ‘‘But your woman could have tended it!’’ ‘No, Sefior, she is sick.’’ ‘‘How, then, could she have overtaken you?’’ he is asked. ‘‘She ran only a little way and then shouted to me.’’ ‘*And what about the rest of the month?’’ persists the contador. “The other lambs came, Senor, and I should have lost them all if I had left.’’ The contador seems at the end of his complaint. The Indian promises to work overtime. His difficulties seem at an end, but the superintendent looks at his old record. ‘‘He always makes the same excuse. Last year he was three weeks late.’’ So the poor shepherd is fined a sol and admonished that his lands will be given to some one else if he does not respond more promptly to his patron’s call for work. He leaves behind him a promise and the rank mixed smell of coca and much unwashed woolen clothing. It is not alone at the work that they grumble. There is ma- laria in the lower valleys. Some of them return to their lofty mountain homes prostrated with the unaccustomed heat and alter- nately shaking with chills and burning with fever. Without aid . 86 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU they may die or become so weakened that tuberculosis carries them off. Only their rugged strength enables the greater number to return in good health. A plantation may be as large as a principality and draw its laborers from places fifty miles away. Some of the more distant Indians need not come to work in the canefields. Part of their flock is taken in place of work. Or they raise horses and mules and bring in a certain number each year to turn over to the patron. Hacienda Huadquina (Fig. 46) takes in all the land from the snow-covered summits of the Cordillera Vileapampa to the canefields of the Urubamba. Within the broad domain are half the climates and occupations characteristic of Peru. It is diffi- cult to see how a thousand Indians can be held to even a mixed allegiance. It seems impossible that word can be got to them. However the native ‘‘telegraph’’ is even more perfect than that among the forest Indians. From one to the other runs the news that they are needed in the canefields. On the trail to and from a mountain village, in their ramblings from one high pasture to another, within the dark walls of their stone and mud huts when they gather for a feast or to exchange drinks of brandy and chicha—the word is passed that has come up from the valleys. For every hundred faena Indians there are five or six regular laborers on the plantations, so with the short term passed by the faena Indians their number is generally half that of the total laborers at work at any one time. They live in huts provided for them by the planter, and in the houses of their friends among the regular laborers. Here there are almost nightly carousals. The regular laborer comes from the city or the valley town. The faena laborer is a small hill farmer or shepherd. They have much to exchange in the way of clothing, food, and news. I have fre- quently had their conversations interpreted for me. They ask about the flocks and the children, who passed along the trails, what accidents befell the people. ‘‘Last year,’’ droned one to another over their chicha, ‘‘last year we lost three lambs in a hailstorm up in the high fields near the snow. It was very cold. My foot cracked open and, though THE BORDER VALLEYS OF THE EASTERN ANDES 87 I have bound it with wet coca leaves every night, it will not cure,’’ and he displays his heel, the skin of which is like horn for hard- ness and covered with a crust of dirt whose layers are a record of the weather and of the pools he has waded for years. Their wanderings are the main basis of conversation. They know the mountains better than the condors do. We hired a small boy of twelve at Puquiura. He was to build our fires, carry water, and help drive the mules. He crossed the Cordillera Vileapampa on foot with us. He scrambled down into the Apurimac canyon and up the ten thousand feet of ascent on the other side, twisted the tails of the mules, and shouted more vigorously then the ar- rieros. He was engaged to go with us to Pasaje, where his father would return with him ina month. But he climbed to Huascatay with us and said he wanted to see Abancay. When an Indian whom we pressed into service dropped the instruments on the trail and fled into the brush the boy packed them like aman. The soldier carried a tripod on his back. The boy, not to be outdone, insisted on carrying the plane table, and to his delight we called him a soldier too. He went with us to Huancarama. When I paid him he smiled at the large silver soles that I put into his hand; and when I doubled the amount for his willingness to work his joy was unbounded. Forthwith he set out, this time on muleback, on the return journey. The last I saw of him he was holding his precious soles in a handkerchief and kicking his beast with his bare heels, as light-hearted as a cavalier. Often I find myself won- dering whether he returned safely with his money. I should very much like to see him again, for with him I associate cheerfulness in difficult places and many a pleasant camp-fire. CHAPTER VII THE GEOGRAPHIC BASIS OF REVOLUTIONS AND OF HUMAN CHARACTER IN THE PERUVIAN ANDES Human character as a spontaneous development has always been a great factor in shaping historical events, but it is a strik- ing fact that in the world of our day its influence is exerted chiefly in the lowest and highest types of humanity. The savage with his fetishes, his taboos, and his inherent childlikeness and suspi- cion needs only whim or a slight religious pretext to change his conduct. Likewise the really educated and the thoughtful act from motives often wholly unrelated to economic conditions or results. But the masses are deeply influenced by whatever affects their material welfare. A purely idealistic impulse may influence a people, but in time its effects are always displayed against an eco- nomic background. There is a way whereby we may test this theory. In most places in the world we have history in the making, and through field studies we can get an intimate view of it. It is peculiarly the province of geography to study the present distribution and character of men in relation to their surroundings and these are the facts of mankind that must forever be the chief data of economic history. It is not vain repetition to say that this means, first of all, the study of the character of men in the fullest sense. It means, in the second place, that a large part of the char- acter must be really understood. Whenever this is done there is found a geographic basis of human character that is capable of the clearest demonstration. It is in the geographic environment that the material motives of humanity have struck their deepest roots. These conclusions might be illustrated from a hundred places in the field of study covered in this book. Almost every chapter of Part I contains facts of this character. I wish, however, to dis- 88 THE GEOGRAPHIC BASIS OF HUMAN CHARACTER 89 cuss the subject specifically and for that purpose now turn to the conditions of life in the remoter mountain valleys and to one or two aspects of the revolutions that occur now and then in Peru. The last one terminated only a few months before our arrival and it was a comparatively easy matter to study both causes and effects. A caution is necessary however. It is a pity that we use the term ‘‘revolution’’ to designate these little disturbances. They affect sometimes a few, again a few hundred men. Rarely do they involve the whole country. A good many of them are on a scale much smaller than our big strikes. Most of them involve a loss of life smaller than that which accompanies a city riot. They are in a sense strikes against the government, marked by local dis- orders and a little violence. Early in 1911 the Prefect of the Department of Abancay had crowned his long career by suppressing a revolution. He had been Subprefect at Andahuaylas, and when the rebels got control of the city of Abancay and destroyed some of the bridges on the principal trails, he promptly organized a military expedition, con- structed rafts, floated his small force of men across the streams, and besieged the city. The rebel force was driven at last to take shelter in the city jail opposite the Prefectura. There, after the loss of half their number, they finally surrendered. Seventy-five of them were sent to the government penitentiary at Arequipa. Among the killed were sons from nearly half the best families of Abancay. All of the rebels were young men. It would be difficult to give an adequate idea of the hatred felt by the townspeople toward the government. Every precaution was taken to prevent a renewal of the outbreak. Our coming was telegraphed ahead by government agents who looked with suspi- cion upon a party of men, well armed and provisioned, coming up from the Pasaje crossing of the Apurimac, three days’ journey north. The deep canyon affords shelter not only to game, but also to fugitives, rebels, and bandits. The government generally abandons pursuit on the upper edge of the canyon, for only a pro- longed guerilla warfare could completely subdue an armed force 90 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU scattered along its rugged walls and narrow floor. The owner of the hacienda at Pasaje is required to keep a record of all passen- gers rafted across the Apurimac, but he explains significantly that some who pass are too hurried to write their names in his book. Once he reaches the eastern wall of the canyon a fugitive may command a view of the entire western wall and note the approach of pursuers. Thence eastward he has the whole Cordillera Vilca- pampa in which to hide. Pursuit is out of the question. When we arrived, the venerable Prefect, a model of old-fash- ioned courtesy, greeted us with the utmost cordiality. He told us of our movements since leaving Pasaje, and laughingly explained that since we had sent him no friendly message and had come from a rebel retreat, he had taken it for granted that we intended to storm the town. I assured him that we were ready to join his troops, if necessary, whereupon, with a delightful frankness, he explained his method of .keeping the situation in hand. Several troops of cavalry and two battalions of infantry were quartered at the government barracks. Every evening the old gentleman, a Colonel in the Peruvian army, mounted a powerful gray horse and rode, quite unattended, through the principal streets of the town. Several times I walked on foot behind him, again I pre- ceded him, stopping in shops on the way to make trivial purchases, to find out what the people had to say about him and the govern- ment as he rode by. One old gentleman interested me particularly. He had only the day before called at the Prefectura to pay his respects. Although his manner was correct there was lacking to a noticeable degree the profusion of sentiment that is apt to be exhibited on such an occasion. He now sat on a bench in a shop. Both his own son and the shopkeeper’s son had been slain in the revolution. It was natural that they should be bitter. But the precise nature of their complaint was what interested me most. One said that he did not object to having his son lose his life for his country. But that his country’s officials should hire Indians to shoot his son seemed to him sheer murder. Later, at Lam- brama, I talked with a rebel fugitive, and that was also his com- plaint. The young men drafted into the army are Indians, or fc. 57—Arboreal cacti in the mixed forest of the dry valley floor below Sahuayaco, Fic. 56—The type of forest in the moister tracts of the ing ” used in mak 1c0 In the center of the photograph valley floor at Sahuayaco. tree known as the “sandy mat is a 10n. gati river navi canoes for 1 Fig. 59. Fie. 58—Crossing the Apurimac at Pasaje. These are mountain horses, small and wiry, with a protective coat of long hair. They are accustomed to graze in the open without shelter during the entire winter. Fic. 59—Crossing the Apurimac at Pasaje. The mules are blindfolded and pushed off the steep bank into the water and rafted across. THE GEOGRAPHIC BASIS OF HUMAN CHARACTER 91 mixed, never whites. White men, and men with a small amount of Indian blood, officer the army. When a revolutionary party organizes it is of course made up wholly of men of white and mixed blood, never Indians. The Indians have no more grievance against one white party than another. Both exploit him to the limit of law and beyond the limit of decency. He fights if he must, but never by choice. Thus Indian troops killed the white rebels of Abancay. “ |RANGES AND PLA Ree ee te Nauta hs at HUMBOLDT CURRENT. : Fig. 71. Fig. 72. y LY G OWLANDS SE MOUNTAINS, oS = ong COASTAL REGION BARRENS : SS EXCEPT ALONG VALLEY PLSURS> Siac AND ON SEAWARD SLOPES 0 Bone LOW COAST RANGES Fic. 73. Fie. 74. Fig. 71—The three chief topographic regions of Peru. Fie. 72—The wind belts of Peru and ocean currents of adjacent waters. Fie. 73—The climatic belts of Peru. Fie. 74—Belts of vegetation in Peru. 124 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU atmospheric levels of diminishing pressure; hence they expand, deriving the required energy for expansion from the heat of the air itself. The air thereby cooled has a lower capacity for the retention of water vapor, a function of its temperature; the colder the air the less water vapor it can take up. As long as the actual amount of water vapor in the air is less than that which the air can hold, no rain falls. But the cool- ing process tends constantly to bring the warm, moist, ascend- ing air currents to the limit of their capacity for water vapor by diminishing the temperature. Eventually the air is saturated and if the capacity diminishes still further through diminishing temperature some of the water vapor must be condensed from a gaseous to a liquid form and be dropped as rain. The air currents that rise thousands of feet per day on the eastern slopes of the Andes pass again and again through this practically continuous process and the eastern aspect of the moun- tains is kept rain-soaked the whole year round. For the trades here have only the rarest reversals. Generally they blow from the east day after day and repeat a fixed or average type of weather peculiar to that part of the tropics under their steady domination. During the southern summer, when the day-time temperature con- trasts between mountains and plains are strongest, the force of the trade wind is greatly increased and likewise the rapidity of the rain-making processes. Hence there is a distinct seasonal differ- ence in the rainfall—what we call, for want of a better name, a ‘‘wet’’ and a ‘‘dry’’ season. On the western or seaward slopes of the Peruvian Andes the trade winds descend, and the process of rain-making is reversed to one of rain-taking. The descending air currents are com- pressed as they reach lower levels where there are progressively higher atmospheric pressures. The energy expended in the proc- ess is expressed in the air as heat, whence the descending air gains steadily in temperature and capacity for water vapor, and there- fore is a drying wind. Thus the leeward, western slopes of the mountains receive little rain and the lowlands on that side are desert. CLIMATOLOGY OF THE PERUVIAN ANDES 125 THE CLIMATE OF THE COAST A series of narrow but pronounced climatic zones coincide with the topographic subdivisions of the western slope of the country between the crest of the Maritime Cordillera and the Pacific Ocean. This belted arrangement is diagrammatically shown in Fig. 75. From the zone of lofty mountains with a well-marked summer rainy season descent is made by lower slopes with successively ZONE OF {ZONE OF FOG-, ZONE OF DESERT PLAINS ZONE OF STEEP {ZONE OF LOFTY MOUNTAINS AND | COASTALTER-!COVEREDMOUN-! RAIN AT INTERVALS OF MANY YEARS VALLEYS =} PLATEAUS 0.000 RACES : TAINS | YEARLY RAINS RAIN ONCE RAIN AT INTER- IN MANY VALS OF 5-10 YEARS | YEARS 5) \ i 0 00 ga PROFILE OF MAJES VALLEY—— — Fie. 75—Topographie and climatic provinces in the coastal region of Peru. The broadest division, into the zones of regular annual rains and of irregular rains, occurs approximately at 8,000 feet but is locally variable. To the traveler it is always clearly defined by the change in architecture, particularly of the house roofs. Those of the coast are flat; those of the sierra are pitched to facilitate run off. less and less precipitation to the desert strip, where rain is only known at irregular intervals of many years’ duration. Beyond lies the seaward slope of the Coast Range, more or less constantly enveloped in fog and receiving actual rain every few years, and below it is the very narrow band of dry coastal terraces. The basic cause of the general aridity of the region has already been noted; the peculiar circumstances giving origin to the variety in detail can be briefly stated. They depend upon the meteorologic and hydrographic features of the adjacent portion of the South Pacific Ocean and upon the local topography. The lofty Andes interrupt the broad sweep of the southeast trades passing over the continent from the Atlantic; and the wind circulation of the Peruvian Coast is governed to a great degree by the high pressure area of the South Pacific. The prevailing winds blow from the south and the southeast, roughly paralleling the coast or, as onshore winds, making a small angle with it. When the Pacific high pressure area is best developed (during the southern winter), the southerly direction of the winds is empha- 126 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU sized, a condition clearly shown on the Pilot Charts of the South Pacific Ocean, issued by the U. S. Hydrographic Office. The hydrographic feature of greatest importance is the Hum- boldt Current. To its cold waters is largely due the remarkably low temperatures of the coast. In the latitude of Lima its mean ae Le ae San surface temperature is about “ 10° below normal. Lima itself has a mean annual tempera- ture 4.6° F.. below the theo- retical value for that latitude, (12° §.). An accompanying curve shows the low tem- - perature of Callao during the winter months. From wmid- _ June to mid-September the mean was 61° F., and the Fie. 76—Temperatures at Callao, June- annual mean is only 65.6" F. September, 1912, from observations taken (18° C.). The reduction in by Captain A. Taylor, of Callao. Air tem- peratures are shown by heavy lines; sea temperatures by light lines. In view of a reduction in the Vapor Capac- the scant record for comparative land and water temperatures along the Peruvian coast this record, short as it is, has special an effect of which much has interest. temperature is accompanied by ity of the super-incumbent air, been made in explanation of the west-coast desert. That it is a contributing though not ex- clusive factor is demonstrated in Fig. 77. Curve A represents the hypothetical change of temperature on a mountainous coast with temporary afternoon onshore winds from a warm sea. Curve B represents the change of temperature if the sea be cold (actual case of Peru). The more rapid rise of curve B to the right of X-X’, the line of transition, and its higher eleva- tion above its former saturation level, as contrasted with 4, indicates greater dryness (lower relative humidity). There has been precipitation in case A, but at a higher temperature, hence *Hann (Handbook of Climatology, translated by R. De C. Ward, New York, 1903) indicates a contributory cause in the upwelling of cold water along the coast caused by the steady westerly drift of the equatorial current. CLIMATOLOGY OF THE PERUVIAN ANDES 127 more water vapor remains in the air after precipitation has ceased. Curve B ultimately rises nearly to the level of A, for with less water vapor in the air of case B the temperature rises more rapidly (a general law). Moreover, the higher the tem- perature the greater the radiation. To summarize, curve A rises more slowly than curve B, (1) because of the greater amount of water vapor it contains, which must have its temperature raised with that of the air, and thus absorbs energy which would BELT OF FALLING TEMPERATURES BELT OF RISING TEMPERATURES, F CLOUD BANKS, HIGH DEW POLNT CLEAR SKIES, LOW DEW POINT, ~|AND MODERATE PRECIPITATION AND ARIDITY. | I SEA SHORE COAST RANGES DESERT Fic. 77—To show progressive lowering of saturation temperature in a desert under the influence of the mixing process whereby dry and cool air from aloft sinks to lower levels thus displacing the warm surface air of the desert. The evaporated moisture of the surface air is thus distributed through a great volume of upper air and rain becomes increasingly rarer. Applied to deserts in general it shows that the effect of any cosmic agent in producing climatic change from moist to dry or dry to moist will be disproportionately increased. The shaded areas C and C’ represent the fog-covered slopes of the Coast Range of Peru as shown in Fig. 92. X—xX’ represents the crest of the Coast Range. otherwise go to increase the temperature of the air, and (2) be- cause its loss of heat by radiation is more rapid on account of its higher temperature. We conclude from these principles and de- ductions that under the given conditions a cold current intensi- fies, but does not cause the aridity of the west-coast desert. Curves a and b represent the rise of temperature in two con- trasted cases of warm and cold sea with the coastal mountains eliminated, so as to simplify the principle applied to A and B. The steeper gradient of b also represents the fact that the lower the initial temperature the dryer will the air become in passing over the warm land. For these two curves the transition line X-X’ coincides with the crest of the Coast Range. It will also be seen that curve a is never so far from the saturation level as 128 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN DEC., JAN., 1897-1900 9 a.m. } 3 p.m. nN Va PERU N Zo SAW WON Fie. 78—Wind roses for Callao. The figures for the earlier pe- i riod (1897-1900) are drawn from data in the Boletin de la Sociedad Geografica de Lima, Vols. 7 and 8, 1898-1900: for the latter period data from observations of Captain A. Taylor, of Callao. The diam- eter of the circle represents the proportionate number of observations when calm was registered. CLIMATOLOGY OF THE PERUVIAN ANDES 129 eurve b. Hence, unusual atmospheric disturbances would result in heavier and more frequent showers. Turning now to local factors we find on the west coast a re- gional topography that favors a diurnal periodicity of air move- ment. The strong slopes of the Cordillera and the Coast Range create up-slope or eastward air gradients by day and opposite OCT.-MARCH, 1893-’95 Fie. 79—Wind roses for Mollendo. The figures are drawn from data in Peruvian Meteorology (1892-1895), Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College, Vol. 39, Pt. 2, Cambridge, Mass., 1906. Observations for an earlier period, Feb. 1889-March 1890, (Id. Vol. 39, Pt. 1, Cambridge, Mass. 1899) record S. E. wind at 2 p. m. 97 per cent of the observation time. gradients by night. To this circumstance, in combination with the low temperature of the ocean water and the direction of the prevailing winds, is due the remarkable development of the sea- breeze, without exception the most important meteorological fea- ture of the Peruvian Coast. Several graphic representations are appended to show the dominance of the sea-breeze (see wind roses 130 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU for Callao, Mollendo, Arica, and Iquique), but interest in the phenomenon is far from being confined to the theoretical. Every- where along the coast the virazon, as the sea-breeze is called in contradistinction to the terral or land-breeze, enters deeply into the affairs of human life. According to its strength it aids or hinders shipping; sailing boats may enter port on it or it OCT.-MARCH N N 7 a.m. APRIL-SEPT. N Fie. 80—Wind roses for the summer and winter seasons of the years 1911-1913. The diameter of the circle in each case shows the proportion of calm. Figures are drawn from data in the Anuario Meteorolégico de Chile, Publications No. 3, (1911), 6 (1912) and 13 (1913), Santiago, 1912, 1914, 1914. may be so violent, as, for example, it commonly is at Pisco, that cargo cannot be loaded or unloaded during the afternoon. On the nitrate pampa of northern Chile (20° to 25° §.) it not infrequently breaks with a roar that heralds its coming an hour in advance. In the Majes Valley (12° S.) it blows gustily for a half-hour and about noon (often by eleven o’clock) it settles down to an uncomfortable gale. For an hour or two CLIMATOLOGY OF THE PERUVIAN ANDES 131 before the sea-breeze begins the air is hot and stifling, and dust clouds hover about the traveler. The maximum tempera- ture is attained at this time and not around 2.00 P. m. as is nor- mally the case. Yet so boisterous is the noon wind that the laborers time their siesta by it, and not by the high temperatures of earlier OCT.-MARCH N APRIL-SEPT. Fre. 81—Wind roses for Iquique for the summer and winter seasons of the years 1911-1913. The diameter of the circle in each case shows the proportion of calm. For source of data see Fig. 80. hours. In the afternoon it settles down to a steady, comfortable, and dustless wind, and by nightfall the air is once more calm. Of highest importance are the effects of the sea-breeze on pre- cipitation. The bold heights of the Coast Range force the nearly or quite saturated air of the sea-wind to rise abruptly several thousand feet, and the adiabatic cooling creates fog, cloud, and even rain on the seaward slope of the mountains. The actual form and amount of precipitation both here and in the interior region vary greatly, according to local conditions and to season and also from year to year. The coast changes height and contour from 132 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU place to place. At Arica the low coastal chain of northern Chile terminates at the Morro de Arica. Thence northward is a stretch of open coast, with almost no rainfall and little fog. But in the stretch of coast between Mollendo and the Majes Valley a coastal range again becomes prominent. Fog enshrouds the hills almost daily and practically every year there is rain somewhere along their western aspect. During the southern winter the cloud bank of the coast is best developed and precipitation is greatest. At Lima, for instance, RAINY SEASON DRY SEASON SEA BREEZE = AO RNam ey EA BREEZE Fie, 82—The wet and dry seasons of the Coast Range and the Cordillera are complementary in time. The “wet” season of the former occurs during the southern winter; the cloud bank on the seaward slopes of the hills is best devel- oped at that time and actual rains may oceur. Fie. 88—During the southern summer the seaward slopes of the Coast Range are comparatively clear of fog. Afternoon cloudiness is characteristic of the desert and increases eastward (compare Fig. 86), the influence of the strong sea winds as well as that of the trades (compare Fig. 93B) being felt on the lower slopes of the Maritime Cordillera. the clear skies of March and April begin to be clouded in May, and the cloudiness grows until, from late June to September, the sun is invisible for weeks at a time. This is the period of the garua (mist) or the ‘‘tiempo de lomas,’’ the ‘‘season of the hills,’’ when the moisture clothes them with verdure and calls thither the herds of the coast valleys. During the southern summer on account of the greater relative difference between the temperatures of land and water, the sea- breeze attains its maximum strength. It then accomplishes its greatest work in the desert. On the pampa of La Joya, for exam- ple, the sand dunes move most rapidly in the summer. According to the Peruvian Meteorological Records of the Harvard Astronom- ical Observatory the average movement of the dunes from April to September, 1900, was 1.4 inches per day, while during the sum- mer months of the same year it was 2.7 inches. In close agree- ment are the figures for the wind force, the record for which also CLIMATOLOGY OF THE PERUVIAN ANDES 133 shows that 95 per cent of the winds with strength over 10 miles per hour blew from a southerly direction. Yet during this season the coast is generally clearest of fog and cloud. The explanation ap- pears to lie in the exceedingly delicate nature of the adjustments between the various rain-making forces. The relative humidity of the air from the sea is al- ways high, but on the im- mediate coast is slightly less so in summer than in win- | ter. Thus in Mollendo the % relative humidity during the winter of 1895 was 81 per cent; during the summer 78 per cent. Moreover, the temperature of the Coast Range is considerably higher % in summer than in winter, and there is a tendency to reévaporation of any mois- ture that may be blown against it. The immediate shore, indeed, may still be cloudy as is the case at Cal- lao, which actually has its Dec., Jan. June, July 3 p.m. Yj 4 SS AHA Ly g Ly Scale of Cloudiness cloudiest season in the sum- Coclear E3025 2425-75 WZZ9.5-10 peoples Completely Fie. 84—Cloudiness at Callao. Figures mer, but the hills are com- paratively clear. In conse- quence the sea-air passes over into the desert, where are drawn from data in the Boletin de la Sociedad Geogrifica de Lima, Vols. 7 and 8, 1898-1900. They represent the conditions at three observation hours during the summers (Dec., Jan.) of 1897-1898, 1898-1899, 1899- 1900 and the winters (June, July) of 1898 and the relative increase in tem- 1899. perature has not been so great (compare Mollendo and La Joya in the curve for mean monthly temperature), with much higher vapor content than in winter. The relative humidity for the winter season at La Joya, 1895, was 42.5 per cent; for the summer season 57 per cent. The influence of the great barrier of the Maritime Cordillera, aided 134 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU doubtless by convectional rising, causes ascent of the compara- tively humid air and the formation of cloud. Farther eastward, as the topographic influence is more strongly felt, the cloudiness 1894 1895 . a Tian A NIDIJIF A Fame N] DIC: ; WINTER UMMER TER MER awe ee ge Joya, 1p.m. —~| ° Fig. pee eurves for Mollendo is lines) and La Joya (broken lines) April, 1894, to December, 1895, drawn from data in Peruvian Meteorology, 1892- 1895, Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College, Vol. 49, Pt. 2, Cambridge, Mass., 1908. The approximation of the two curves of maximum tempera- ture during the winter months contrasts with the well-maintained difference in minimum temperatures throughout the year. increases until on the border zone, about 8,000 feet in elevation, it may thicken to actual rain. Data have been selected to demon- strate this eastern gradation of meteorological phenomena. 1892 1893 1894 1895 cocene ABE PPP PP EEE EEE ECEE EERE ee eee eee Bae SE 000008 GANGES SSeS ee eee CECE oe oUe 10 WINTER [SUMMER | [SUMMBR | [WINTER | [| 1,5 OEE ACE EEC EEE EEE Hae eee eet SEP. alee e seco le ees BeoBe Bale | ele 1 ae eral 5 MA 5 Lickel state el ele 3 aia 3 fA Se PPE EEC hese a55 mela palelale IRR ERE EL P SS=E RCC Sat REESE Fie. 86—Mean monthly cloudiness for Mollendo (solid line) and La Joya (broken line) from April, 1892, to December, 1895. Mollendo, 80 feet elevation, has the maximum winter cloudiness characteristic of the seaward slope of the Coast Range (compare Fig. 82) while the desert station of La Joya, 4,140 feet elevation, has typical summer cloudiness (compare Fig. 83). Figures are drawn from data in Peruvian Meteorology, 1892-1895, Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College, Vol. 49, Pt. 2, Cambridge, Mass., 1908. At La Joya, a station on the desert northeast of Mollendo at an elevation of 4,140 feet, cloudiness is always slight, but it in- creases markedly during the summer. Caraveli, at an altitude of CLIMATOLOGY OF THE PERUVIAN ANDES 135 5,635 feet,? and near the eastern border of the pampa, exhibits a tendency toward the climatic characteristics of the adjacent zone. Data for a camp station out on the pampa a few leagues from the town, were collected by Mr. J. P. Little of the staff of the OE nL ANNAN Wii t4 444 Y ZY Y Wy S Fic. 87—Wind roses for La Joya for the period April, 1892, to December, 1895. Compare the strong afternoon indraught from the south with the same phenomenon at Mollendo, Fig. 79. Figures drawn from data in Peruvian Meteorology, 1892-1895, Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College, Vol. 39, Pt. 2, Cambridge, Mass., 1906. Peruvian Expedition of 1912-13. They relate to the period January to March, 1913. Wind roses for these months show the characteristic light northwesterly winds of the early morning hours, in sharp contrast with the strong south and southwesterly indraught of the afternoon. The daily march of cloudiness is closely coordinated. Quotations from Mr. Little’s field notes fol- low: ‘‘In the morning there is seldom any noticeable wind. A breeze starts at 10 a. m., generally about 180° (i. e. due south), increases to 2 or 3 velocity at noon, having veered some 25° to the southwest. It reaches a maximum velocity of 3 to 4 at about 4.00 P. M., now coming about 225° (i. e. southwest). By 6 p. m. the wind 2 This is the elevation obtained by the Peruvian Expedition. Raimondi’s figure (1,832 m.) is higher. 136 THE ANDES' OF SOUTHERN ‘PERU has died down considerably and the evenings are entirely free from it. The wind action is:about the same every day. It is not a.cold.wind and, except with the fog, not. a damp one, for I have not worn a coat in it for three weeks. It has a free unobstructed sweep across fairly level pampas. . . . At an interval of every three or four days a dense fog sweeps up from the southwest, dense enough for one to be easily lost init. It seldom makes even N N 6-7 p.m. | Fie. 88—Wind roses for a station on the eastern border of the Coast Desert near Caraveli during the summer (January to March) of 1913. Compare with Fig. 87. The diameter of the circle in each case represents the proportion of calm. Note the characteristic morning calm. a sprinkle of rain, but carries heavy moisture and will wet a man on horseback in 10 minutes. It starts about 3 Pp. m. and clears away by 8.00 p.m... .. During January, rain fell in camp twice on successive days, starting at 3.00 p. m. and ceasing at 8.00 P. M. It was merely a light, steady rain, more the outcome of a dense fog than a rain-cloud of quick approach. In Caraveli, itself, I am told that it rains off and on all during the month in short, light showers.’’ This record is dated early in February and, in later notes, that month and March are recorded rainless. ) Chosica (elevation 6,600 feet), one of the meteorological sta- tions of the Harvard Astronomical Observatory, is still nearer the CLIMATOLOGY OF THE PERUVIAN ANDES 137 border. It.also lies farther north, approximately in the latitude of Lima, and. this in part may help to explain the greater cloudi- ness and rainfall. The rainfall for the year 1889-1890’ was. 6.14 inches, of which 3.94 fell in February. During the winter months when: the principal wind observations were taken, over 90 per cent showed noon winds from a southerly direction while in the early Cloudiness Completely {-_] Clear 0-2.5 2.5-7.5 () 7.5-10 MM “Overcast Fie, 88—Cloudiness at the desert station of Fig. 88 (near Caraveli), for the summer (January to March) of 1913. morning northerly winds were frequent. It is also noteworthy that the ‘‘directions of the upper currents of the atmosphere as recorded by the motion of the clouds was generally between N. and EK.”’ Plainly we are in the border region where climatic influences are carried over from the plateau and combine their effects with those from Pacific sources. Arequipa, farther south, and at an altitude of 7,550 feet, resembles Chosica. For the years 1892 to 1895 its mean rainfall was 5.4 inches. Besides the seasonal variations of precipitation there are longer periodic variations that are of critical importance on the Coast Range. At times of rather regular recurrence, rains that are heavy and general fall there. Every six or eight years-is said to be a period of rain, but the rains are also said to occur some- times at intervals of four years or ten years. The regularity is only approximate. The'years of heaviest rain are commonly as- sociated with an unusual frequency of winds from the north, and an abnormal development of the warm current, El Nifio, from the 138 Gulf of Guayaquil. THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU Such was the case in the phenomenally rainy year of 1891. The connection is obscure, but undoubtedly exists. The effects of the heavy rains are amazing and appear the more so because of the extreme aridity of the country east of Scale of Cloudiness |_| Pn a ccm ; HAS \P2eVEaaeses oNeae ; Bameeooo sce Rae eeSsas them. During the winter the desert traveler finds the air temperature rising to uncomfortable levels. Vege- tation of any sort may be completely lacking. As he approaches the leeward slope of the Coast Range, a cloud mantle full of refresh- ing promise may be seen Fic. 90—Cloudiness at Chosica, July, 1889, to September, 1890. Chosica, a station on the Oroya railroad east of Lima, is situated on the border region between the desert zone of the coast and the mountain zone of yearly rains. The minimum cloudiness recorded about 11 a. m. is shown by a broken line; the maxi- mum cloudiness, about 7 p. m., by a dotted line, and the mean for the 24 hours by a heavy solid line. The curves are drawn from data in Peruvian Meteorology, 1889-1890, Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College, Vol. 39, Pt. 1, Cambridge, Mass., 1899. just peeping over the crest (Fig. 91). .duong, slender cloud filaments project east- ward over the margin of the desert. They are traveling rapidly but they never ad- vance far over the hot wastes, for their eastern margins are constantly un- dergoing evaporation. At times the top of the cloud bank rises well above the crest of the Coast Range, and it seems to the man from the temperate zone as if a great thunderstorm were rising in But for all their menace of wind and rain the clouds never get beyond the desert outposts. aspect changes, the heavy yellow sky of the desert displaces the murk of the coastal mountains and the bordering sea. the west. In the summer season the It is an age-old strife renewed every year and limited to a nar- row field of action, wonderfully easy to observe. We saw it in its most striking form at the end of the winter season in October, 1911, and for more than a day watched the dark clouds rise omi- nously only to melt into nothing where the desert holds sway. At night we camped beside a scum-coated pool of alkali water no CLIMATOLOGY OF THE PERUVIAN ANDES 139 larger than a wash basin. It lay in a valley that headed in the Coast Range, and carried down into the desert a mere trickle that seeped through the gravels of the valley floor. A little below the pool the valley cuts through a mass of granite and becomes a steep- walled gorge. The bottom is clogged with waste, here boulders, there masses of both coarse and fine alluvium. The water in the valley was quite incapable of accomplishing any work except that associated with solution and seepage, and we saw it in the wet season of an unusually wet year. Clearly there has been a diminu- tion in the water supply. But time prevented us from explor- ing this particular valley to its head, to see if the reduction were due to a change of climate, or only to capture of the head-waters by the vigorous rain-fed streams that enjoy a favora- ble position on the wet seaward slopes and that are extending their watershed aggressively toward the east at the expense of their feeble competitors in the dry belt. An early morning start enabled me to witness the whole series of changes between the clear night and the murky day, and to pass in twelve hours from the dry desert belt through the wet belt, and emerge again into the sunlit terraces at the western foot of the Coast Range. Two hours before daylight a fog descended from the hills and the going seemed to be curiously heavy for the beasts. At daybreak my astonishment was great to find that it was due to the distinctly moist sand. We were still in the desert. There was not a sign of a bush or a blade of grass. Still, the surface layer, from a half inch to an inch thick, was really wet. The fog that overhung the trail lifted just before sunrise, and at the first touch of the sun melted away as swiftly as it had come. With it went the surface moisture and an hour after sunrise the dust was once more rising in clouds around us. We had no more than broken camp that morning when a merchant with a pack-train passed us, and shouted above the bells of the leading animals that we ought to hurry or we should get caught in the rain at the pass. My guide, who, like many of his kind, had never before been over the route he pretended to know, asked him in heaven’s name what drink in distant Camana 140 THE ANDES OF SOUTHERN PERU whence he had come produced such astonishing effects as to.make a man talk about rain in a parched desert. We all fell to laugh- ing and at our banter the stranger stopped his pack-train and earnestly urged us to hurry, for, he said, the rains beyond the pass were exceptionally heavy this year. We rode on in a doubtful state of mind. I had heard about the rains, but I could not be- leve that they fell in real showers! About noon the cloud bank darkened and overhung the border of the desert. Still the sky above us was clear. Then happened what I can yet scarcely believe. We rode into the head of a tiny valley that had cut right across the coast chain.